


Going Viral

by SkartoArgento



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: AU, Augmentations, Avatars, Body Modification, Comfort, Frenemies, Friends to Lovers, Hacking, Hallucinations, Lost in cyberspace, Love, M/M, NSN machine, Original Characters - Freeform, Snakes, Violence, Virus, fun with memory clusters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkartoArgento/pseuds/SkartoArgento
Summary: Pritchard's neural aug malfunctions, leading both he and Jensen into the depths of Sarif's NSN machine where they learn a little more about each other, and gain more than just friendship.





	1. Wired Differently

In spite of Jensen's security goons stalking down the corridors, Sarif Industries lulled into a peaceful doze after seven pm.

No visitors gawking through the glass of his tech lab on their way to see Sarif, no group of scientists clustered together like sheep in the presence of a wolf to tell him that somehow – _somehow_ – they'd lost the password for the main terminal and were all locked out of the system (scientists were never as smart as they liked to think,) and tonight, no Jensen grumbling away in his ear, on some mission to whatever unfortunate part of the world had to deal with a moron in a long black coat parkouring down the streets. Perhaps the best part.

For some, night had a peculiar way of twisting familiar settings into something sinister, even with all the lights blazing, but to Frank, the combination of silence, caffeine, and the insane amount of sugar in energy bars stoked whatever section of his brain was responsible for creative thought. Tonight, the wrestle of new software. _Snake_ functioned the same way as the _Stop!_ and _Nuke_ virus programmes – plug in and play – only instead of using his superpowers for evil, _Snake_ worked to prevent hacking attempts, could slither through infected nodes and destroy the source. In theory. Tests so far had been mixed. And since it was still illegal to create such software (tolerance of _Stop!_ and _Nuke_ only existed due to their conception before certain laws) Sarif... absolutely didn't need to know exactly what would safeguard their systems.

At his desk, three hours passed in silence. _Snake_ 's habit of destroying uninfected node defences whittled from an intriguing puzzle to a frustrating problem.

All right. Shift in focus. He shelved the issue. Sometimes they worked slowly at the back of his mind, tangled balls of string that unravelled of their own accord if he didn't look directly at them. Subconscious problem-solving.

Coffee provided a great fuel for such musings, and his mug happened to be empty. The bones in his neck creaked when he rolled his head and stood – just in time to catch pop-up in the middle of the computer screen. Intellicam five. Motion detected on the floor above. Probably a guard – in fact, almost certainly a guard – but since the lab attack, Sarif's approach to security had cranked up a notch. _"We're not taking any more chances, Frank – something gets flagged up, anything at all, I want you to check it out."_

Maybe he could take those little speeches a bit more seriously if Sarif deleted emails that contained passwords. Or stopped installing those virus-riddled flash games. Or actually kicked Jensen into doing some real security work instead of letting the resident pet Aug lounge around, that false sense of entitlement expanding every time some damsel in distress wanted help filling out paperwork or getting their cat out of a tree.

Coffee would have to wait for a few minutes – as much as that pained him. A click, and intellicam five's stream filled the screen. Its slow, sweeping arc covered four offices, and, speak of the Devil, Jensen's was one of them. The camera aimed down the corridor, but when it ticked back to the place it detected motion, he stopped its movement. Jensen's office, a guard in the doorway. Looked like Donovan, but hard to tell. Speaking to someone.

He let the camera tick a couple more times. From a certain angle, it caught half the inside of the office. The edge of a desk, the corner of a bookshelf. And the couch, which Jensen reclined on, book in one hand and face turned to the guard. Probably waiting to be fed peeled grapes or given an augmented foot rub.

White noise hummed in his ears. A ping in his mind, out of nowhere, then a soft, genderless voice: “ _Software upgrade scheduled. Please attach uplink cable and run current augmentation software.”_

He dragged his eyes off the screen. The sensation of a pending update, a warm flow behind his forehead, sent a spark of relief through his stomach. Finally. Two months since the last. Hopefully they'd sorted out whatever glitch kept him from spotting strings of malicious code that contained three of the same letters in a row. He'd sent emails – strongly worded emails – to the development team, but apparently cerebral augmentations were low on the priority list. Obviously the head of cyber security didn't _actually_ need to be able to do his job.

On the screen, the guard moved out of sight and Jensen resumed reading. No peeled grapes. Poor Jensen.

In the general chaos of his desk, the coil of upload cable played hide-and-seek for a few minutes until he unearthed it from under a stack of reports. One end plugged into the computer, the other, a needle-thin jack, slid into the port at his temple hidden under hair. No wireless upgrade for him – not special enough to have shiny new Sarif technology. A moment of tingling static, and the software for his cerebral hacking aug clicked into update mode. Everything blurred into light and shadow, just for a few seconds, but after the first few times it had been easy enough to adjust. The first time, shortly after Sarif hired him, he'd made the mistake of panicking and yanked the wire out, left the aug half-updated and his eyesight a complete mess until the dev team rolled the update back and reinstalled. They'd had a field day with that one – head of cyber security gets freaked out by new aug. Not exactly his proudest moment.

Another tingle at the front of his skull, through his left eye. Vision still hazy. This update was taking longer than necessary. Were they running off a backup server down there, or –

Pain, knife-quick and _stinging,_ flashed through his left eye socket, over almost as soon as it began. His wince and blink brought moisture, tears. That was new. It had never hurt before – it wasn't _supposed_ to hurt, that was the deal, one of the guarantees.

Oh, if they thought his emails had been harsh before, they were in for a shock.

His eyes squeezed themselves shut, waited for another wave of pain, but no aftershocks after that initial stab. It could have been coincidental. Too much coffee, too long staring at the monitor. Sometimes the human body did things for no reason, hurt in places with no visible cause. Not unusual. He would still be sending that email.

The world came back as muddled blobs, like an artist dabbing background colours on a canvas who then filled in shapes and details. About time. And, oh look, joy of joys, his computer had decided to turn itself off. Another tick on the list of 'things that do stuff for no reason.' Pressing the on button did nothing. He'd either fried out the PSU or some issue with the electrical supply stopped it from starting up. Damn lucky it hadn't affected the update. Maybe he'd knocked out the power cable.

Outside his lab, darkness. No more cleaners in the building for the motion-sensor lights to register, and the guards had probably headed to the cafeteria for their second late-shift coffee. Around him, in the silence of his pocket of light, the building seemed to breathe like some giant beast. A deep inhale under his feet, then the low rumble of an exhale from inside the walls. Likely cause: his own breathing, amplified in his ears against the quiet and, without his computer's constant mechanical murmur, he had only just noticed.

He slid the jack from his temple, curled the wire around itself and put it in the top drawer of his desk. The silence dug under his skin. From enjoyable and inspiring to sinister. A low frequency undetectable by the human ear, but sensed nonetheless. Enough of this – he wasn't alone in the building, and he certainly wasn't a child to trot anxiously to the guards or Jensen's office to reassure himself.

A casual walk, however, would not be out of the question. A quick stroll to stretch his legs and get the lights back on.

Halfway to the door, and he clicked on his infolink. “Jensen?”

A grunt from the other end, pure caveman. He'd been surprised by the amount of books in Jensen's office, and even more surprised by the college degrees on the wall. So their head of security could read. Who would have guessed? _“Finally leaving, Francis? You could have walked all the way up one flight of stairs if you wanted to say goodnight.”_

“Is your computer running?” He opened the door to darkness. Motion sensor high up on the ceiling halfway down the hall. Because of course it was.

“ _Is this you making a joke, or are you genuinely asking me if my computer's switched on?”_

“Why would I be making a joke?” A dark block of shadow down the hall. A photocopier? What was it doing in the middle of the hall there? “Would you _check?_ I can't turn mine on, and I'd much rather be dealing with an isolated machine than with the whole system.”

“ _Sounds like your magic touch with computers is deserting you, Francis. Maybe Sarif'll replace you with someone who's actually pleasant to be around.”_ He could _hear_ the eye-rolling under the faint buzz of infolink. Someone was damn lucky Sarif decided to play Frankenstein. If those expensive augs weren't attached, he could have Jensen's attitude issues taken higher. _“Yeah, it's working fine. Can I go back to reading now, or did you want me to break into every office and check all the machines? Or maybe I could go get you a coffee, a snack –”_

“That's all the information I needed.” And clicked off without another word. The equivalent of slamming the phone down. If they kept up the sniping for much longer, he'd probably say something that would draw Jensen from his cave, club in hand, and might result in them both, once more, being shown the inside of Sarif's office. There was only a certain amount of times 'we promise not to antagonise each other' would work, and he had a feeling they'd breezed way past the number when Sarif stopped believing them.

The photocopier... wasn't. He'd adjusted course to pass by it, but when he reached the spot it should be hulking in the dark, nothing there. Maybe the upgrade had left his sight a little skewed – that would explain the cracks in the shadowed darkness, the threads of light that spilled through.

Debris cluttered the hall, shapeless lumps that defied identification, melted into nothing the closer he came. He didn't stop walking. Any minute now, and the motion sensor would click on. Any moment, and then he could go back to his desk, tinker with _Snake_ some more, and everything would be fine. Everything would be right.

It staggered down the hall towards him, pale and twitching.

Fear should have stolen the breath from his lungs, or at least sent him running in the opposite direction. Instead he stopped, and stared. It didn't look... real. A shifting mass of flesh wrapped in a guard's uniform. Eyes small and black and beady, and then huge, milk-white. Skin a kaleidoscope of moving colours. Fuzzed at the edges, like reality itself denied its existence.

'Monster' would be a generous word. That thing came from some circle of Hell.

It passed him with a nod, head bulging in his direction, and kept on loping, twitching, faded into the darkness.

Vision problems were apparently the least of his worries.

_"Sarif Industries,"_ came the mechanical burr through the infolink. Not Jensen. _"We're in."_

"Who's in... where?" His own voice, strained, hard to get the words out. Ah, there was the fear, kicking in finally.

The infolink connection cut off with a quick click. Phone slammed down on him now. Rude.

All right, on a scale of one to ten, the situation currently hovered at about a eight. Not the worst, but not even close to being ideal. Script kiddies in his head. In his _aug_. Good luck with that, kids, that's not how you steal data, but the altered vision and perception... how did they do that? Why?

Deep breaths. Don't panic. Sarif didn't pull him out of prison because of his winning personality. He wasn't made head of cyber security because no one else wanted the job. Think. Augmentation restart, easy enough to do once the dev team showed him how that first time. Just had to plug himself back in and load up the program. Easy, nothing to it. Forget the little voyeurs in his head – not much they could do in there right now, apart from make the world look like a bad acid trip.

An anxious trot back to his office (guard-monster-demon... _thing_... had moved on to terrorise new pastures) and a quick peek under the desk to check the computer cable. All fine down there. Snake rested on a paper file, glared at him with goofy doodle eyes. Legal issues weren't great for the company, as Sarif pointed out while staring at him as though he planned to blow up the entire building, so he'd grabbed a black marker pen and drawn on the hardware shell – a curled snake, too-big fangs and a long forked tongue – instead of labelling. Anyone rifling through his desk (a certain augmented somebody) wouldn't give it a second glance.

Power button flashed green under his finger, and a high whine of electrical components fired up inside the computer. Okay, one problem solved. Had the voices in his head done that too?

Orange text flared on the screen, but his eyes slipped over without taking a word in. Concentration lowered. The hands on the keyboard, _his_ hands, belonged to a doll. He fumbled for the connection cable, slid the jack into his head with a sense of relief. Script kiddies, prepare to be purged.

Code burst to the screen from his fingers like a dream. No pondering over the filenames or bypassing his own security methods. It flowed without thought. Text lines chased each other up the screen. So many, so fast.

The rhythm of his fingers soothed away any self-doubt.

He could do this all day.

...But how long had he actually been doing this? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Wasn't it supposed to be a two minute job – wipe the files and reinstall? The computer clock caught his eye. Near enough an hour. Typing. Typing – what?

He yanked his hands away from the keyboard. Or at least, tried to. They stayed there, fingers flying over the keys. No longer belonging to some invisible doll, but not belonging to him either. At the side of the screen, several boxes, overlapping, one poisonous word at the center: _Uploading._

What was he uploading – and where to?

The code slowed to a crawl. His hands trembled, fingers like magnets attracted to the keys. A few lines of code made it to his brain long enough to decipher. Encrypted data, hidden files, payment details – all going to an unknown server. By his hand.

Oh, Christ, _no_.

Not some bored teenager with too much time on their hands. Not some script kiddie probing Sarif Industries defences. This was black hat level, the finest, a purposeful and planned attack by some very clever bastards. Hacking augs was one thing, they were machines, essentially, but hacking an aug remotely and controlling the brain?

"One of you works at a LIMB clinic. Am I right?" He didn't really expect an answer. The last two fingers on each hand twitched, stopped their frantic tapping. Now if he could just pull the others back. "Hengsha, I bet. Conveniently close to Tai Yong headquarters. How does it feel, being second best to us?"

Index fingers tapped, slow and heavy on the keyboard, like a heart struggling to keep beating. Not code this time.

>YOU WILL CONTINUE

"Will I?" But even as he sneered at the screen, his fingers disobeyed again and resumed spilling secrets.

Dammit. Had to think. No way would they let him just walk away after this. They'd have some sort of plan - wipe his brain, maybe, send a charge fizzing around his skull and either kill him or make it so he wouldn't be able to use a mouse, let alone deal with cyber security again.

And the thing that tore, the thing that festered inside: everyone would think he had turned traitor.

Panic switched from low grade to high. Control wrenched from his grip, and even as his heart thudded in his chest, his fingers typed away.

Outside his office window, a shadow flickered with a sound like static, like an audio glitch caught and warped.

Terror curled his stomach, and he didn't understand why. His hands dropped from the keyboard, strings cut on a puppet. A flash of pale metal against the window. The low croon of a predator.

_No, no, what is that, what is –_

His door creaked open, and what stood there was pulled from a nightmare.

Robotic. Frayed wires and rusted metal limbs, cauterised into the flesh of a torso. Shreds of skin caught among the gears and hung down like pieces of fluttering red rags. The face gleamed, skull-white except for the dark sheen of a metal jaw. No eyes – but two black and bleeding empty holes.

_Run._

_Stand still. Don't take your eyes off it._

Torn in two directions, pulled so strongly that he could do nothing but cringe in his seat. _Death,_ said a little primitive voice in the back of his head, one that belonged with Jensen in the cave. An old voice.

A stuttering hitch over the mechanical whine. His breath. Short and hard, like coming up for air after jumping in an icy lake. Not enough to satisfy his paralysed lungs. The thing _creaked,_ opened its metal maw, and inside, layers of human teeth jutted, ringed all the way down into its throat. Garbled strings of words croaked out, twisted into an electronic buzz. Over the words, static. Under them, the whirr of fans rusted for years.

It took a step into the office, slow, heavy. Metal leg squealed as though carved from something half-dead and consumed by pain.

The wall at his back now – when had he stood up? – and the taser from his drawer in his hand. _Stop_ , he wanted to say, _don't come any closer,_ he wanted to say; all the old clichés, but actors were just that, actors, and his own throat betrayed him, closed in on itself.

Breathing too fast – couldn't feel his lips or his fingers, or the weight of the taser, and oh, fantastic, everything growing dark, like shadows pressing into his eyes, and it came closer, so close, still garbling away, and it reached out, fingers like the bones of something charred black, reached for his _face_ –

Reflex, a terrified clench of muscle, pulled the trigger.

The barbs connected, lodged themselves in the mess of wires at the wrist. A discordant screech ripped the air around them, and colours shifted, black and white and gold, and he should _run, right now_ , before his legs gave up entirely –

It caught him in three steps.

A sting in his shoulder, tiny compared to whatever crushing pain he expected. A sound escaped the stubborn blockade of his throat, a whimper that would shame a scared puppy, and metal fingers closed around his upper arm, yanked him to the middle of the office, shoved hard.

He fell, the ground soft under his back.

Before the lights went out, faintly, and from very far away, someone said his name.

 

“ – don't care where he is, you find him – _right now –_ and get him down here!” Sarif's voice, outside the door to the tech lab, cracked through the tense murmurs of the guards. Adam had the utmost sympathy for whoever was on the other end of the infolink. Woe betide anyone who didn't get a pissed-off Sarif what he wanted. “I have to take care of this. Goddamn crazy –”

The door, yanked open, hit the wall with a force that would have cracked regular glass. Donovan twitched back as though afraid Sarif would lunge for the nearest person, but the other guards kept their body language tight. In truth, ten years ago he would have twitched too. Sarif could bluster like a champ and yell at whoever needed it at the time, but what entered the room now was cold fury. The C.A.S.I.E aug corroborated, ticked off _anger_ , _betrayal_ , _disappointment_ – all the big players.

He stood a little straighter, and when Sarif's eyes went to Pritchard, lying on the couch like a corpse, C.A.S.I.E flashed a triangular red warning. He took a step forward. “Boss.”

“Adam.” Sarif faced him, brows drawn but any impulsive thoughts apparently cleared. “You okay? Someone said he shot you.”

“A taser. And Pritchard doesn't exactly win medals for his aim.” The barbs in his wrist caught him off-guard – even aimed at him, he'd convinced himself that Pritchard wouldn't fire. Such a rookie mistake, one he sure as hell wouldn't make again.

The electric shock had fizzed up his aug. _Stung._ Knocked his arm out for a moment or two, but hell, he had two hands, and it only took one to grab the tranq gun from under his coat. Whatever anger flared, it fizzled to nothing, dampened by Pritchard's wide-eyed doggish terror. A look he'd seen before, way back when, in the Mexicantown riots. On the faces of men faced with death. What the hell was going on?

Sarif's fingers rubbed the ridge between brow and nose. “Christ, Adam, just what the hell happened? I get pulled out of bed to say my head of cyber security's gone nuts and shot my other head of security – and then when I get here, I find out he's been streaming private documents to – to _God knows where!_ ”

“We're trying to get it all sorted out.” Or rather, he'd been kneeling there making sure Pritchard didn't stop breathing while his security team poked around, like forensics at a crime scene, with a confused air. If there was some SOP for when your co-workers started acting like you were the ghost of Christmas Fucked-Up, none of them had read it.

The intern sitting at Pritchard's desk and tapping away at the computer shot them a terrified look over the top of the screen. Her dark curls bounced when she jerked her head back down. One of Pritchard's unfortunate underlings. The way he heard it, they got stuck with the IT techs and never learned a damn thing from the guy who hired them. Paranoid Pritchard's MO.

_Yeah, good job keeping them at arm's length, Francis – something happens to you and we're all screwed. Maybe you wanted it that way._

She'd either managed to pry some knowledge out of Pritchard though, or at least was a natural for hacking, because she'd gone through enough code to work out what Pritchard had done. If it wasn't for her, they'd be shooting in the dark.

Mental note – get that poor woman some coffee at the first opportunity.

When Sarif crossed over to the couch, he made sure to stick close behind. Wouldn't look good if the boss decided to strangle the head of cyber security. Some things even David Sarif couldn't keep out of the news.

Pritchard seemed so _fragile_ lying down, a lot less threatening than the spitting and sneering thing that glared at him across the cafeteria every morning. Sleep smoothed away the frown and locked away the contempt. Probably did the guy a favour by knocking him out – no one should frequently run on three hours of sleep when they almost definitely needed a good eight. C.A.S.I.E picked up REM movements – unusual for the ones he darted, but if you deprived someone of enough sleep, they dreamed fast – and the faint stirring of emotions below, like the pale flash of  fish under ice. Someone, maybe Gallagher, had secured Pritchard's hands together with plastic cuffs – something he would have considered unnecessary before.

Arms folded, Sarif stared down, a man studying his rabid dog. “Jesus, Frank,” the words came so softly that Sarif could have been talking to himself, “seven years. Didn't think you'd play the long con. Not with me.”

“Boss, I think there's something else going on here.” If he hovered at Sarif's shoulder long enough, maybe he'd grab attention again. “He was acting normal before. Asked me if my computer was on.”

“Probably trying to distract you from whatever he was doing. Maybe he needed your computer to remotely access the encrypted servers, I don't know, son, I don't.”

“When I walked in, he freaked out –”

“Because you caught him at it, Adam!” Sarif turned at last, arms spread in frustration. The gold filigree of the augmented one caught the light, branched like veins against the black metal. “You've seen his file, right? Those two counts of fraud? He and some friends decided to trick their way into our payment system and take what they could. He'd still be serving out ten years if it wasn't for me.” That _'I'm going to have to shoot my dog'_ look came back. “I let him stew in there for a few months, and then I... cut him a deal. Guess someone cut him a better one, huh?”

So many messed-up things he wanted to address there, but refocusing was probably the better option. “No, this was something else. It wasn't like I caught him with his hand down his pants – more like I _scared_ him.” That word seemed too... small. Too insignificant for what he'd seen in Pritchard's face. “More than that. I don't think he saw me. I think he saw something else.”

Sarif's sigh was all indulgence. “So in a fit of crazy he decided to steal our data? I can see Frank burning out and having a breakdown – to be honest, I've been expecting it. Don't look at me like that, Adam. I know he works hard, and up until today I thought he'd never do anything to screw us over – but you gotta admit, he's not exactly the sanest person in the office.” Before he could say anything, Sarif held up an augmented hand. “I know, I know – that's hardly PC. But what he did, that's not crazy, Adam, it's methodical. It's _planned_. People don't lose their minds and suddenly decide to start stealing from their employer!”

“There's gotta be more to it than this.” Megan had always called him stubborn, sighed during every little fight when he refused to give ground. It had been meant as an insult, especially when she compared him once to Kubrick's frequent refusal to drop any sticks they'd thrown, but he'd never taken it that way. Being stubborn was not always a terrible thing, especially not when lives were on the line. “It looks bad for him, I'm not denying that. But Pritchard doesn't value money as much as he does prestige. Why would he throw away his job for something like this?”

“I don't know why Frank does half the stuff he does.” Less fury, more consideration now. C.A.S.I.E whispered Sarif's confusion, and he pounced.

“Let me try and find out what's really going on. Pritchard's an asset who'll be hard to replace.”

Sarif paced to the grubby electric motorcycle in the middle of the room, and then back, eyes reluctant to visit anywhere in the vicinity of the couch. “That's true enough... hardly had a single data breach since I hired him... But listen, Adam,” a finger came up, pointed in his face, “if you're wrong –”

“ – Then you can terminate his employment and I won't say a word. I'll even help kick him out the front door.”

Silence mulled for a moment. Outside the office, a small crowd – night guards and some curious scientists from the newly-renovated labs – muttered, shifted, peered through the glass wall like gaping children at a zoo. The irritation pulled at his mouth. A few steps across the room, and he yanked the trailing cord beside the door. A sheath of thin metal blinds cascaded down, obstructed them from view. Zoo closed.

He turned back, and Sarif had picked up a haphazard stack of bright green sticky notes. On the top, peeking out from under a creased edge, the doodle of an eye, lashes exaggerated, pupil tiny. In the corner, a line that curled in on itself and became a snail around a formula he didn't recognise. And at the bottom, a stick man with a cape and a tiny stick sword.

He saw Pritchard sitting at the desk, idle, pen automatically looping for the snail, the eye, conjuring up monsters for the stick hero to fight.

Pritchard, as human as the rest of them. Sometimes it was easy to forget.

His fingers squeezed the back of the couch. Pritchard slept on, hair spilling from ponytail, hands trembling even in the cuffs. Vulnerable.

When he faced Sarif again, he did it with his arms folded, teeth together. “I don't think I'm wrong.”

“So what's the plan, Adam?” A gesture of that augmented hand, and Sarif inclined his head. “Head of security – you think you can play detective too?”

His guards shuffled themselves closer, ready for orders. Any indecision would be logged, even subconsciously. “First I'll wait for him to wake up. Then ask him some questions.” But even as he said it, doubt rose. The kind of terror Pritchard displayed wouldn't be driven away with a quick nap. What would they do, interrogate through a wall of blind panic? A question between each scream?

An impatient tap of fingers against upper arm, and Sarif jerked his head towards the door. “All right, everyone, we need some space here. That means _leave_.”

They turned to him first, and under Sarif's cold stare he nodded. “Wait outside.”

A rustle of body armour against shirts, and the guards filed out with military composure – aside from Gallagher, who glanced back at Pritchard as though worried about getting a bullet in the back of his head. The woman at Pritchard's computer was the last one out, and closed the door behind her with a gentle click. Silence filled the room, stifled as Sarif continued staring, as though musing over an overpriced piece of art. Had he... disappointed in some way by his answer? Fidgeting – a crutch that hard-ass Delaney had tried to drill out of him during SWAT training (with some success) – came as a twitch in his fingers, a shift in his stance. He could out-stare the crazies, the mad-eyed and flailing terrorists, but his boss? Damned if he didn't lose just a little bit of that self-control.

Pritchard's breath caught, then released as a gasp.

“Maybe there's an easier way to go about this.” Sarif's words didn't seem to be directed at him, more like a mental note, an audible thought process. “Clever guy, aren't you, Frank? Clever, clever guy.”

He didn't like the tone under all those _clever_ s, like some schoolyard bully sneering over the geeky kid. Or, in this case, a geeky kid sneering over an equally geeky kid. “That's why you hired him.”

“There's such a thing as too clever, Adam.” Augmented fingers revisited the bridge of Sarif's nose, and those dark eyes met his. He told his feet to stand still, his own fingers not to move. “Don't let him wake up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think he knew what he was doing, and I think he's not going to talk to you if he wakes up, even if I did give you that social implant. I want this dealt with _now_ – no dragging it out. This stays internal, understood? If you're right, then there's another way you can get answers out of him.” Whatever that 'another way' was, its name lodged itself behind Sarif's tongue, immune to several serious throat-clearing attempts.

Maybe he could use some help. “Look, if it's illegal, we can talk about that later. Right now I don't really care.”

“It's not illegal, Adam,” Sarif rubbed the back of his own neck, “not _exactly_. It's a, uh, NSN machine. Neural SubNet. Gonna be great for holographic conferences, really gives you a sense of presence, you know? Not due to come out on the market until next year, but I managed to sweet-talk the creator.”

_You mean the flash of cash sweet-talked the creator._ “Go on.”

“So, you hook him –” Sarif nodded at Pritchard, “up to it. Can probably do that with the port in his head, connects to his aug. Then get in the chair. I don't know exactly what you'll find in there, but there should be memory clusters at the least. Not sure about the defences, but since it's Pritchard, assume he's got something up his sleeve.”

Fighting through Pritchard's aug. Fun. And what the hell was a memory cluster? “Please tell me there's at least a manual I can read before I get inside his head. A set of instructions? ...Side of the box?”

Finally a smile, tired but there all the same. “It's simple enough to work out once you get in. Not easy to explain, but I think it's right up your street.” The smile faded back into a grimace. “Frank likes to break in and use it sometimes – thinks I don't know. I never cared, figured he worked hard enough to earn a little fun time, but now... Maybe he's been doing more than just playing holographic chess in there.”

When this got straightened out, they were all going to sit down and have a good _long_ talk about security access.

“Fine, I'll do it.” His coat spilled forward as he stooped down, brushed the couch. One arm under the back of Pritchard's knees, the other under the skeletal protrusion of shoulder blades, and he lifted. Without augmentations he would have struggled; Pritchard was, what – just an inch shorter than him, and all that lankiness didn't help the situation. Elbows and legs everywhere. Like trying to manoeuvre a damn bundle of sticks wrapped in clothes. Under the too-bright lights of the office, Pritchard's skin gleamed sick and pale, corpse-like. Never a great look. None of the heavy _sinking_ smell he associated with dead bodies, at least. Just coffee, cigarette smoke, the hint of soap.

“You don't want to call up a gurney from the labs?” Sarif eyed them, a disapproving father prepared to lecture the wilful son. “They'll talk, Adam.”

Pritchard's ribs under his hand, rising and falling almost imperceptible. Calm now. “If I cared about talk I wouldn't be able to do my job. This is faster than waiting for one of those gawkers outside to fetch a gurney. Where's the NSN machine?”

“First left before my office. Code's three-three-nine. I'll be there in a little while – something to sort out first.” A hand twitched in his direction, as though Sarif wanted to place it on his shoulder – or yank Pritchard out of his arms. “I like your tenacity, Adam, always have. But listen, son, don't go deeper than you need to in that thing, all right?” Sarif's smile tried to be kind, understanding, but turned wolfish the longer he stared. “You're there to get answers out of him, not get lost in corporate history.”

_If you see something,_ Sarif's eyes said that the wolfish mouth wouldn't,  _say nothing._

“I'll be discrete.” And how slimy those words tasted. How greasy.

A nod dismissed him, but when he had gone a few steps towards the door, shifting Pritchard so those pants didn't slide off that bony ass, Sarif said, low and heavy: “Adam.”

He didn't turn around. Whatever it was, Sarif could tell his back.

“If you need to make a choice,” the words sounded pulled from some wound, frayed at the edges, “if it gets too rough in there... leave him. That's an order. I won't lose both of you.”

Some small noise hummed through his nose before he could stop it. Maybe it was amusement. Or anger. “I've never been much good at following orders, David.”

The silence from behind his back said it all.

Pritchard's head lolled in the crook of his arm. Not a bundle of sticks any more, more like a sleeping child he had to plug into a machine instead of tuck into bed. No illusions here that Pritchard's appreciation would extend beyond toning down the sneering (if he was lucky), but you didn't do a job like this for pats on the shoulder.

Sarif's eyes burned a hole in his back, followed him out of the door. Next stop: inside Pritchard's head, definitely the last place he ever wanted to be.

In his arms, Pritchard twitched, still asleep, and shoved an elbow into his chest. His sigh couldn't get any louder.

If they got out of this, bastard owed him a huge favour.

 


	2. The Snake's Playground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pritchard meets an old friend and a new horror in the NSN machine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me so long to edit, I am so sorry, I kept second-guessing things because I suck at plot. 
> 
> I really want to thank everyone who commented/read/left kudos, I really didn't expect so many people to like it! :D I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the first - I'm kind of riding off the idea that 'no two NSN machines are alike,' to paraphrase Vega, so Pritchard's version of an NSN machine isn't like Miller's or the one in the Palisade blade (and he can build on it, of course, the clever guy.) And also the fact that Pritchard has a criminal past that's never elaborated on at all (thanks, Eidos.)
> 
> (Also, did I say this was going to be three chapters? Because I'm a filthy liar.)

 

“ _Loading avatar, fifteen percent.”_

He knew that voice. He knew those words.

“ _Forty percent. Seventy-five percent. Avatar fully loaded. Welcome back, NuclearSnake.”_

Face-down, nose pressed into the ground. Tile under his hands, a cold floor that wasn't really there. The voice that floated above feminine yet cold, robotically British.

“ _Multiple code errors detected in lobby. Multiple code errors detected in rooms one, two, three, four, seven, nine, thirteen, fifteen. Server corrupted.”_

His groan did nothing to block out the audio system. Code errors. _Multiple_ code errors. Brain slow to process the meaning of those words, as though his sense of self had divided into two parts – the one that occupied his body, hazy and foggy and lying there doing nothing, and the other hovering nearby, rapping on his consciousness, telling him precisely where he was and to what extent things were screwed.

On his back now, and electric blue lines of light raced across the sea-grey ceiling. Sarif's NSN machine. The lobby of his own neural aug server. Darker than usual. Strange that he had no memory of getting in the machine – stranger still that he woke up on the floor instead of placed on his feet in the 3D space.

What exactly did he remember?

A horrible feeling nagged in his stomach, the sense of something _wrong –_ like waking up after an argument, the memory still out of reach but recalled physically by the body. Something to do with teeth –

_in its throat, rings of them, like a shark – and that noise! That awful, mad scream of metal –_

He stood, wrapped his arms around himself – or rather, wrapped the avatar's arms around itself. The NSN machine hummed, maternal, but even that failed to chase away the image of that thing in his doorway, half-hidden by shadow and staggering forward. No doubt his physical body would be a wreck in the seat of the NSN machine – accelerated heart rate, sweating, shaking – but here, nothing. Whoever decided to stick him in there better be playing babysitter. And what happened to that... thing? Had it attacked him? Right, and then carried him all the way to Sarif's floor to put him in the NSN... hardly plausible.

Something else ticked away in the back of his head. Something to do with his hands –

“They... used them.” His whisper came out strained and tinny through the voice modulator. Memories trickled back, reluctant. “Made me type, made me send all those documents...” Disgust, then shame – then a pulse of anger so real and so hot his avatar weakened, cracked the uploaded skin at his hands into a default purple. That information had been his to protect, to guard. One of many debts to Sarif. And what had that loyalty been worth in the end?

Might as well have let some incompetent member of Jensen's security team fumble confidential documents around the office in a cardboard box.

“ _Multiple code errors detected in lobby. Multiple –”_

“I _know!_ ”

The audio system fell silent.

The lobby, as big as the one in Sarif Industries, stretched back from where he stood. Strange to think that the first time he'd used the NSN it had been the size of a small bedroom with only the input console in the center, as blank and grey as slate. Amazing what a few lines of code could do.

He would take the grey box room over this. Any day.

Code twisted in on itself, turned the lobby from a haven to a rotting organ. The texture for a panel near a door flickered between blue and an impossible black. Again on the corner of the ceiling – a rectangle of void, corruption leaking down the wall. Around the input console, the floor fractured, shards of a mirror thrown to the ground. He edged around the cracks to the opening of the console, sat down on the untouched grey bench. No flow of data on the curved screen, no server status. Not even the latest _Killer Run_ scores – just a garbled mess that made no sense, blue letters interspersed with red errors. One entire section nothing but a glitch of maroon static; same with the monitors suspended from the ceiling.

 _Sarif Industries,_ a memory whispered at the back of his head, _we're in._

He curled his avatar's hands into fists, the portable flexiscreen around his wrist warped with the movement. Those black hats picked the wrong head of security to hack. Whoever put him in the NSN machine deserved a raise. This was _his_ damn playground.

A few taps on the console, and his keystrokes forced themselves onto the screen, flickered in a rather tired way. Not entirely unsalvageable, things rarely were, just a matter of the right code. A crack split down the screen, distorted the lines, but the right code would fix that too.

Access to the security section sent more red lines and lights blinking at him, but the gist was easy enough to grasp. Catastrophic breach, entire areas dark – yeah, he'd already guessed that much. Infolink compromised, neural aug data compromised. Firewall still intact and holding, but not for very long. If he had to guess, they'd been planning to crack that open while he streamed all the data to them. Instead they'd been... interrupted.

_You didn't make that thing._ He stopped typing, sat back on the bench. The empty holes of eye sockets stared back in his head.  _It looked like that, but it wasn't yours. Same as the guard... And you didn't want it to see what you were doing, did you?_

That would explain why they let him have his hands back. Almost a smart way to frame him – pull out when someone else came along and let him try to explain that the voices in his head made him do it.

Bolstered by his code, the firewall strengthened with percentages. Enough to keep his new friends busy for a little while longer. Not great enough intel for them to have known about the NSN machine. Without it... how helpless would he be, trapped and unable to respond against an attack in his own head?

“ _I am detecting,_ ” the audio system chirped at him, _“viral intrusion. Anti-virus software compromised.”_

Fantastic. A virus in his head, and now in the NSN machine. Should've known they'd have a backup plan. Well, as long as he had the console he would be playing the anti-virus. “Let's see it try to get past the firewall now. If it tries to take down the security system, they can watch the code burn off its face.”

It could wear itself out on that firewall while he created a new one, isolate it somewhere until he could wipe the aug.

And then he would deal with the hackers.

All right, first, parameters for the new firewall –

A glug from the shadows at end of the lobby, rough and chopped with the fizz of static, like water poured over a computer. 

His hands fell still. For a few seconds he sat there, listening, the entrance of his little crescent of console at his back, and the shadows in front.

Darkness rippled, unfurled. No welcoming blue lights that lined the walls – all black, save for one that had decided to turn red, and tinged the darkness with a bloody glaze.

Movement, black against the crimson. A humanoid figure shifted, teetered and jerked. The boundary between dark and light dragged angled shadows everywhere, and he leaned forward, squinted. A face, red under the light, empty dark holes for eyes. The glint of an augmented arm.

His breath came out in one long, shaky wheeze of relief. Took a moment before his voice came back. “So, it was you?”

Jensen strode towards him, broke through the darkness and into the dingy light, the shadows trailing along behind as though they didn't want to let go. Augmented shades up rather than the eyeless holes he thought he'd seen; those fun little trust issues obviously followed Jensen all the way into the NSN machine.

“ _Unrecognised party in lobby.”_

“Yes, thank you, I can see that. Jensen, what are you doing in here?”

Rather than stopping a few feet away, Jensen continued right up to the console, stared down at him through the lenses and said nothing. A few awkward moments passed, and he cleared his throat. “...I'm assuming you put me in the NSN machine and then got in yourself... Sarif's idea?”

Jensen's head tilted to the side like an owl watching its prey. Wonderful, just what he needed – a virus in his head, and Jensen being weird. Maybe he was in for the silent treatment, or maybe he could expect a rant – _you messed up, Francis, you let some crazies hack you, Francis, Sarif should hire someone else, blah blah blah_. The kind of childish drivel he'd come to expect.

No rant, although Jensen rolled his shoulders, flexed augmented hands. What was that, a threat display? Luckily, some people in this NSN machine were evolved human beings and didn't have to resort to crude body language. “You can't hurt me in here, Jensen, and we both know you wouldn't touch me anyway. When we get out, I think I'll recommend to Sarif that he tighten your leash.”

No response. Fine. As much as he loved to play this little game, there were things to do, viruses to isolate. Now, for a new firewall he'd have to shuffle the rooms around, bring the security room down to lobby level so he could access –

A sharp movement, black against black. Out of the corner of his eye, the shapeless blur of Jensen twitched again. An avatar couldn't move like that. An avatar couldn't –

So that wasn't an avatar. And that wasn't Jensen.

He flung himself off the bench, away in time to see Jensen's face crack in half. Black tendrils spilled from the gap, curling, arching, _reaching_ –

Avatars couldn't gag in the NSN machine, fortunately for him, but nausea roiled his stomach anyway. The crack widened, split jagged down Jensen's forehead and between the eyes, pulled apart by more of the tendrils. No blood or bone, or teeth, just a skin that dissolved when it touched the floor. Like a zipped file, insides compressed, the actual file far... far bigger.

The virus sloughed off the last piece of its Jensen-suit. Twice as tall as him, edges glitched into jagged data bits. A strange lump for a head, the surface too flesh-like, in constant motion. Four legs, horribly spidery. No eyes.

The tendrils gathered along the rest of the virus's body, each one sucked back in, then re-emerged, reformed. Colours flickered against the empty black, a rainbow curl of oil.

One tendril, striped with red like some exotic poisonous amphibian, slapped down on the console with the sound of a boot being sucked from wet mud. The screen flashed blue, just once, and then died, spluttering.

 _Well... shit._ “Any chance this thing can be quarantined?”

“ _Quarantining virus... Error code 3. Unable to activate quarantine.”_

“Of course, that would be too easy.” A hiss, and the virus curled another tendril over the console. He backed away, the opening of the console behind him. And the fourth door, maybe ten meters. He would have to be fast. The virus stared without eyes. “Whoever made you didn't care about elegance, did they?”

A subtle shift in the tone from the audio system. And then a voice, deep and male, roughened by cigarettes. A voice he never thought he'd hear again.

“ _Damn, Snake, that just hurts my feelings, you know?”_

He said nothing. Tightness in his throat, in his chest.

Legs bristled and sticky with what looked like tar, the virus scuttled impatiently behind the blackening console. Where it had stepped using Jensen's skin, the floor fell away, glitched out into nothingness. If it touched him...

“ _Never thought about what a virus would look like in here, did you?”_ A chuckle, and the speakers set into the wall flushed with static. _“That's one ugly mother fucker... Glad I don't have to deal with it.”_

“I always knew you were a coward at heart, Phee, we all did.” If he ran to the door he could make it. Probably. “You used an image of my co-worker as a proxy – that's almost impressive. I can assume at least one of my memory clusters is compromised?”

The reply was all venom. Phee should have styled as something snake-like before he did. _“We dug into a few, yeah. Such an interesting little life you've made. That Aug guy, Shades McCool, you got a bunch of stuff in your memory clusters about him. Sarif too. Fucker's even richer than he was before, huh? Looks like you've been having fun, Snake, while we were locked away.”_

“You're supposed to _still_ be locked away.”

“ _You think Sarif's the only one who takes staff from the slammer?”_ More of the console eroded, and the virus dug one jointed leg into the weakening code to help it along. Phee's voice lowered to a gritted whisper. _“We were like a litter of puppies to them, Snake. Sarif took his pick, and so did others.”_

“So I was right about Tai Yong. It makes sense – the second best, for the second best.”

The doors either side of him were closest, but the black glitches spread, block by block, crept too close to the door on his left. Instead of a glowing blue symbol on the door to his right, a big red X bled from the simulated metal.

The speaker hissed static, but before Phee could come up with some reply, he turned and bolted for the door behind him.

A horrible screech – like an old dial-up modem in a blender – and the sound of frenzied scuttling.

Even in the NSN machine, with your consciousness squeezed into a virtual reality vessel, you could apparently benefit from the adrenaline rush around your real body. He hit the door, smashed his palm against the glowing symbol. Now was absolutely not the time for lag, please, _God_ , don't let there be any lag –

The symbol twisted in on itself, a sun collapsing into a black hole, and expanded, filled the door with a light as blue as the ocean surrounding a tropical paradise. When he staggered through, beads of light caught his avatar's skin. Didn't matter which room – anything was better than the lobby.

The light faded, tinged to grey, but before he could breath a sigh of relief, black ripped through. The virus screamed, discordant, so loud his muscles tensed, froze him to the spot, just like back in his office, just like under the stare of that dead machine, rabbit-still. A tendril groped for him, reached towards his avatar –

and fell to the ground, severed.

One swipe of his finger and the door locked. Corrosion had already started, black dots spreading like mould. On the floor, the tendril glitched into nothing, along with several tiles. He stepped over the spreading darkness, and carried on down the loading hall.

“ _Ah.”_ Phee didn't sound nearly as inflated this time. _“Extra layers of defence? How long do you think that'll last? C'mon, Snake.”_

The word LOADING glared on the wall ahead. Technically he didn't have to move for the room to load, but anything that felt like putting distance between himself and the virus helped. As he walked, he glanced up at the speakers set into the wall. “Tai Yong must be paying you a decent amount for this. I don't blame them, but they won't like it when you fail. Cracking my head open and stealing must have looked nice down on paper, but I thought you were smarter than that. Or is this personal?”

“ _I'm afraid, for you, it's a bit of both. Shame. If it was up to me, I'd wipe your aug, let you go with only a tiny bit of brain damage, but the bosses upstairs... My hands are tied.”_ A thick inhale, a drag of cigarette. _“Sparrow died in prison, you know.”_

His pause came involuntarily. “No. I didn't.”

“ _Something to do with a couple of drug dealing bitches with an axe to grind. Caught her in the showers. Drowned her in a bucket of whatever that industrial cleaning shit is.”_

Only seventeen when they'd all been arrested, her hair a rainbow of colour that changed every couple of weeks. The strange runaway they'd practically adopted, who used to wheedle cigarettes off him and slide her laptop under his nose when she needed help coding. _I'll die in a shoot-out,_ she said once, smiling and cocking a finger-gun at him, _just bring on the pigs_. Not a gunfight, in the end, nothing so tragic and romantic. Just a bucket, like an unwanted kitten.

“And that's my fault?” It sure felt like it, but he'd be damned if he admitted that.

“ _Are you kidding? You're working for fucking Sarif! You saw him when he stood there, the corrupt piece of shit, and said 'give them ten years.' And then he scoops you up to live on cloud-fucking-nine?_ ” The speakers buzzed with force. _“Bet you didn't even spend one single thought on us, did you, while you were busy being his little toy?”_

The truth weighed heavy, a hot stone in his stomach. Maybe, for a few minutes every so often, he remembered their faces. The furtive meetings in dark apartments, keeping an eye out for any cops sniffing in their direction. Sometimes at night he saw the raid all over again – he and Shark drunk on the power of breaking through Sarif's defences, Spider drunk on alcohol, as she so often was, and Sparrow hovering at her own computer. Phoenix watched everything from an armchair in the corner, a steady supply of cigarettes between his augmented fingers.

They thought they'd been so smart. So clever.

Apparently, the complicated security system of Phoenix's apartment was no match for a cop-operated blowtorch and battering ram.

And he'd abandoned them, hadn't he? Grabbed Sarif's offer like a drowning man clawing for air.

Shame tightened his throat.

The next room, four by the neon turquoise number on the wall, should have held a large holographic security bot – just a little something he'd been adding to over the months to replace Jensen's herd of guards (why pay men when you could own a robot that didn't demand a salary?) but instead of the bot, the word ERROR rotated slowly in 3D. So much for all those months of work.

From the floor to the ceiling, a black cord stretched in one corner, as thick as his body and probably ten times as long. That fizz around the edges again, and underneath, no floor. Blocks had smashed from the walls, jagged figments of code warped and spiked from the ground. Corruption in the rooms. What had they done inside his head?

“ _It's a shame I had to trash this place,”_ and God dammit, Phee did sound sorry, _“you always did have big ideas, Snake. I saw what you've got in the other room. Lit up our monitors like the fucking sun.”_

A memory cluster at the edge of the room, the triangle a dead grey instead of radiating with violet light. Data gone.

Fury twisted his voice into a growl. “You bastard. You're not getting out of this clean. ”

“ _We broke into Sarif's defences before, and seven years is a long time to find new toys to play with. TYM are great, they even let me play with the biochips if I ask nice. Did you enjoy being a crazy puppet?”_

Shit, his biochip too? They could have killed him.

_They're going to._

“What are you looking for?” Talking kept his mind off the possibility of a single-digit life expectancy. “I don't keep sensitive information in memory clusters. You're in the wrong place.”

Phee's words laced with a smile. _“Don't think so. Your boss isn't the only one around with a NSN machine. Whatever you have in that skin, I want it, even if it means tearing you apart, bit by bit – what?”_ A pause, and he held his breath. Phee's voice went from smiling to pissed off. _“Who the fuck are you?”_

The speaker buzzed once, and then fell into silence.

Someone else in the NSN machine. Someone else who would end up in the lobby with that... thing. Shit, if it was Sarif the entire company would fall overnight.

The flexiscreen at his wrist. One shot, and he had to be quick, Phee wouldn't stay distracted for long. Couldn't do much, not without a proper console, but it might just be enough.

 

Once, back in SWAT, they'd been called out to a guy who'd taken his own family hostage in their suburban home, poured gasoline all over the place, and threatened to set it all on fire – “burn it all fuckin' down” the negotiator relayed afterwards. Asshole let the kids and wife go, then threw the match down anyway. The next morning he'd walked up to the cordon of the still-smoking wreck, Megan's arm in his, and watched the fire crew navigate the blackened shell. Charred beams and singed teddy bears. A happy place, devastated so quickly.

The inside of the NSN machine reminded him of that house – only instead of scorch marks and charcoal it looked as though something had taken huge bites out of the walls and floor – and whatever that crumpled desk in the middle was, it probably shouldn't look like metal rusted and eaten away by salt water.

“ _Adam,”_ Sarif had said when he sat in the weird chair, a fatherly hand on his shoulder, _“remember what I said.”_

He hadn't replied then either. Pritchard slumped at his feet, still asleep, tethered to the machine by a wire that stretched from skull to electronics.

Doors on each of the walls, weird semi-circles with glowing symbols in the middle of each one, like some ancient tech temple lost in the jungle and abandoned for centuries. Were all NSN machines like this?

A glint of yellow. His arms, torso, legs, reflected the dim light, nothing but gold facets, like the faces of a precious stone. Black underneath, where his skin should be. One poke to his face confirmed the same. No eyes, just a few planes of hard... whatever this stuff was. How could he even see? Nothing behind the planes either – the entire back of his head was gone.

HUD still on, but no sign of his other augs – and no guns, grenades. Even C.A.S.I.E was MIA. Figured.

“ _Who the fuck are you?”_

Someone wasn't happy. That voice wasn't Pritchard's, but whoever it was sounded just as pleased to see him.

He straightened, folded his arms and tried to look bored – or as bored as a shiny gold thing could look when it didn't have a face. “Yeah. Here to see Pritchard?”

“ _That's not an answer.”_ A speaker on the wall – a grate of stone. If that could be called stone. _“Who the fuck are you, I said.”_

“You're kinda an asshole for a PA, but since this is Pritchard we're talking about, I don't know why I expected anything different.”

“ _Got a mouth on you for someone who just walked into the biggest mistake of their life. Oh, wait,”_ the guy said as though something just clicked in that poor excuse for a brain, _“yeah, yeah, I thought I knew that voice from somewhere. Seen way too much of you in Snake's memory clusters. Yeah, Mr Shades, right? The aug guy.”_

 _Are you going to tell me what a memory cluster is, Mouthy?_ Instead of speaking aloud, he shrugged the gold fractals that made up his shoulders. At the end of the room, shadows shifted, and the symbol of the door opposite flickered in and out, as though something had dashed in front of it – something large and buzzing, a wasps nest at night.

“ _Adam Jensen. Sarif Industries other head of security, Sarif's other little guard dog. I'd introduce myself, but I'm not staying long. Snake managed to slither away – good at that, the sneaky little fuck, but I'll get him eventually. For now, you'll do. Head of security... what do you have hidden away in that avatar?_ "

An electric tinge of expectation in the air. The pause before a crack of thunder. He shifted right, focused on the spread of darkness at the other end of the room. Something big and ugly stared back, ready to charge.

_"Get him."_

Shadows burst outwards like claws, clung to the trailing edges of the thing scuttling towards him, torn out of the deepest jungle, or fished from the permanent black depths of the ocean. It reached with flailing tentacles –

and he dodged, rolled to the side.

How could he fight it with no augs? Could he even fight it at all?

Debris beside him, and without thinking about it he picked up a fragment of metal from the collapsed desk in the middle of the room, threw it at the thing. It reached out, flicked the projectile into a burst of light and nothing.

Okay, so playing pitcher wasn't such a great idea if the batter could make the ball vanish.

It rushed again, a mad bull lowering its horns, and again he slipped out of its way, kept a careful eye on the tentacles. Something black gooped down from those insect legs. If he had a sense of smell in this machine, good money would go on that thing stinking of bodies rotting in a swamp. And what would it do if it caught him? This was a simulation, a weird, fucked-up virtual reality playpen, nothing bad could happen, right? Maybe the asshole over the weird thing that passed for the intercom thought scaring him would be a fun thing to do.

A leg swept towards him like a scythe. Not so fast this time – maybe thirty centimetres away from his shiny face-planes. Damn. A few months and his body had already forgotten what it was like without augs. Forgotten what it was like to be human.

 _Not the time_ , he wanted to yell at whatever section of his brain was responsible for pessimism, but the leg returned, and then another, fast, almost blinding.

Retreating was a highly underrated strategical choice. He backed up, slow, gave himself room. The thing watched without eyes, jerking that quivering lump of what he assumed was head in his direction. Under one of the few bright blue lights on the ceiling now, and it gleamed off black edges and bristles. A flash of fangs, then mandibles, then a leech-like sucker. An ever-shifting predator.

It growled, low and discordant. Done playing.

Fine. So was he.

He dodged again, rolled again, and this time a leg swiped a lot closer. One sidestep, and his foot came a millimetre from going through one of the gaping black holes in the floor. Sooner or later, his luck would run out – one of those tentacles would grab his arm, or a leg, or he would stumble, hesitate.

If you died in virtual reality, did you die in real life?

The thing tensed, hunched, joints of its legs creaking. Preparing to pounce.

His gold-plated hand became a fist. One good punch before he went out.

White gleamed in the shadows. Blue light caught the angles of a face, a body. He didn't lower his fists, but kept one eye on the thing, and one on the darkness at the end of the room.

Pritchard stepped forward, eyes hard and the colour of storm clouds in the dim light, sneering in that way he knew so well. Relief burst hot in his stomach - and just as rapidly chilled to ice. Hard enough for him to keep dodging and weaving - what chance would Pritchard have with no combat training?

_"Snake!"_ The voice from the speaker hissed, a joy that bordered on insanity.  _"Now I don't have to hunt you down. Shame. Kinda looking forward to the chase."_

Not even a flicker of acknowledgement from Pritchard. So they weren't on the same side – good to know, but that didn't prove anything when it came down to it.

The thing's head twitched, elongated and twisted to the side. A hungry jumble of gargling wrenched itself from its throat.

"Pritchard," he tried to keep his voice undemanding, to find a perfect balance between calmness and urgency, something Pritchard might actually listen to, "stay away from it. Back off, I'll lead it..." Where? To the other side of the room? A lot of good that would do them.

No acknowledgement for him either. Pritchard stared at the monster as though eyeing it up, unafraid, probably trying to figure out it could be reprogrammed or something. All right, he was used to silent treatment, but in this situation it was a little too far.

"Pritchard!" His 'bad dog' voice now – firm, dominant, the one he used when Kubrick tried to chew the corners of the oak coffee table Megan's mother had bought them. "Get the hell away from it!"

Breathless, speaker-guy sounded far too happy to watch this. _"No, Snakey, why don't you go give the friendly virus a big hug?"_

A virus? That... _thing_ was a virus?

Still standing there, sneering, Pritchard ignored them both. By degrees, the disgusting thing – the virus – turned, legs clicking down on the floor, and faced Pritchard, who met its eyeless glare without so much as a blink.

A wordless sound of denial,of horror, burst from where his mouth should be.

The tentacles whipped out, wound around Pritchard's arms faster than he could track, and pulled Pritchard forward towards an opening maw. Black branched in veins up the motorcycle jacket, across the orange patches, and spread like poison across the white turtle-neck. When they stretched up Pritchard's throat, the awful paralysis that seized his legs released him. He darted forward, arm stretched out, words caught in the fuzz of static in his head – _no, no, not again, not like Megan, I won't let it, I won't –_

"Jensen!"

Someone else's 'bad dog' voice. He stopped, hard, a few feet away from the thing. Pritchard's eyes caught his, blank and black now. Agony curled tight in his stomach. _Lost another one, didn't you, couldn't save someone else and that's your damn job –_

"Jensen, did your audio receiver not sync properly? Over here!"

He wrenched his eyes away, looked past the thing, past Pritchard's charred skin. The door on the other side of the room had cracked open, light spilling from the gap. And pressed between the two halves –

"Pritchard?"

Wild-eyed, the Pritchard in the doorway beckoned with an arm. "Come on, Jensen! That won't fool it for long!"

He took one step forward... and the virus sank its teeth (or mandibles, or sucker) into the other Pritchard's chest, shook its head from side to side like a dog killing a rat.

A noise ripped itself from his throat. He started forward, Pritchard's now-black ponytail limp and hanging in the air –

"It's not me, Jensen!" The other Pritchard squeezed out between the door, took a step forward. "This way! Hurry up, before it figures it out!"

Against the surge in his chest, he strafed to the side, away from the thing, away from the Pritchard in its mouth. Every step towards the door wanted him to turn back, to tear that ugly thing limb from limb. A few feet away from the door, he stopped, turned back. A husk now, Pritchard dangled like a hanged man. Hair fell to the floor, dissolved into glittering purple specks, then vanished completely.

"Come _on_!" Pritchard's voice just behind his shoulder tugged him back. Without turning to look away, he backed through the doors as husk-Pritchard's head collapsed in on itself, and the virus, devouring what remained in its tentacles, shrieked. The back of his neck cooled, even though, technically, he didn't have that body part either.

Pritchard – the other Pritchard – slid in front of him, fumbled with something on the door. With the sound of boulders grinding together, the door halves closed, but not before he saw the virus jerk its head in their direction, sending what remained in its mouth crashing to the floor and exploding into violet shards. Its scream cut off when the doors shut.

Another symbol on this side - blue, but when Pritchard traced it with a finger, it rotated ninety degrees, sank into the stone and flashed from blue to a vibrant red. Locked. Or so he hoped.

"Did it touch you?" Pritchard's face, pale and pinched with anxiety. Why wasn't 'looking normal' standard in this machine? One step forward, and Pritchard took one back, eyes narrowed. "Jensen, _did it touch you?_ "

"No." He gave himself a once-over to check. Nothing but flat gold. Black underneath, but not nearly like the creature's black. "I didn't – what was that? What the hell just happened? You were there, it ate you – ”

“Jensen –”

"What happens if it touches me?"

"Jensen..." Ah, the 'you're an idiot child' tone. Wondering when that would make an appearance. "What did you _just_ see?"

"I don't know what the hell I just saw, _Francis_." The fear, the sudden shock of grief coated his words with acid. "You've got a lot of explaining to do. How about we start with that... thing?"

"I'll tell you as we go – the doors are high security, but it'll find a hole in the code eventually. I'd rather not be here when it does." Pritchard's eyes flitted this way and that, and as they did a band of purple shards fluttered from fingertips to throat, the same weird material that made him gold. A couple of seconds passed, and more shards went from ear to chin, layering themselves over Pritchard's left eye, gleaming like heliotrope insect wings in the sun. They melted back to skin and hair and eye in the time it took for him to inhale.

A deep breath, and the surge of fear and anger cooled.

"Fine, come on."

Down the hall, striding ahead before Pritchard could voice any pissy little complaints.

_A husk, hollowed out like a dead wasp's nest, skin black and paper-thin, dead, you knew him and talked to him –_

Shock left an imprint on his brain, raw and hurting. That was what it would be like to see Pritchard die. Not real – but at the same time, real enough.

He paused, let Pritchard catch up, and ignored the haughty "You don't even know where you're going!"

The word LOADING pulsed above the next door. No sign that the thing was eating through the other one. "We're far enough away," he said, and tried the door in front of them. LOADING flashed, and he sensed Pritchard's seething behind him. Yeah, yeah, 'loading,' he got it. "Time to spill it, Pritchard. And bear in mind, I might not have my augs in here, but if I find out you're lying –"

"– You'll do something horrible to me when we get out, no doubt involving my hands and your nanoceramic blades. How terrifying." Sarcasm thick enough to spread on bread. Most people divided into one of two groups when talking to him – those who thought he was some kind of monster, and those who hid their fear behind smiles. Pritchard just seemed to find him irritating. Almost refreshing. Almost.

LOADING pinged green, and Pritchard elbowed in front to open the door.

This room, room four, apparently, looked almost as screwed up as the previous one. Black cracks in the wall leaked onto the ground. Sections missing, sliced away, or pushed up to form small cliffs. At least the door at the far end glowed a friendly blue.

Pritchard's mouth set in a thin line. "I don't remember getting into the NSN machine. I can assume you decided to put your soldier-skills into action and choked me out?"

"As much as that's one of my top fantasies, nothing so dramatic." He tilted his head towards the far door and Pritchard nodded. They set off again, navigating the holes in the floor, all the while husk-Pritchard's blank, dead eyes in his mind. Normal-Pritchard (or as normal as you could get) grumbled away, stepped over a pool of dark liquid as though it were just a puddle of muddy water. Completely unaffected. How much to say? "You sent a load of private files somewhere. Remember that? Sarif said I should interrogate you in here, access your memory clusters, whatever those are. I had to tranq you out, you were acting crazy."

"You shot me with a dart?" Irritation went right to disbelief. "Christ, Jensen, you - you could have killed me!"

"Relax, I made sure you were still breathing. Besides, you shot me with a taser, so I guess that makes us about even."

"I didn't - oh." Pritchard stopped on a thin wedge of floor, a cavern underneath on either side. "That was... you."

"It hurt."

Pritchard stepped off onto solid ground. Another pulse of purple scales, from legs to hips this time. "If you haven't realised by now, some of my... former friends have a grudge against Sarif, and want to finish what we... what they started. Only they've decided to use me as an unwilling accomplice. Emphasis on the unwilling part, Jensen, they hacked my neural augmentation."

"And the mighty Pritchard couldn't stop them."

"The mighty Pritchard was busy hallucinating and losing control of his own motor functions." A prickle there, enough to send a sliver of guilt sliding down his throat. Yeah, he could relate to that. "It was actually smart thinking on Sarif's part to put me in the NSN – I can access some of my aug's defence systems from inside here. If you'd waited much longer, the virus would have free run of the place."

They passed one of the jutting cliffs of floor. He swept a gold palm against the surface. It vibrated slightly at his touch, as though alive. "I didn't know a virus would look like that. It's more... organic than I expected."

"What wasn't smart was hopping in after me. Now you're just as at risk as I am. Possibly more so, given your amount of neural augmentations."

"Great."

A sigh and eye roll in his direction. How come Pritchard got real eyes anyway? "Just don't let the virus touch you. These avatars are linked to the augs via the NSN, but I also made it so that they... double as a data cache. Easier to move data that way.” No more eye-rolling, but Pritchard glared as though this was all his fault. “This scenario is plan B – sending the files via remote control wasn't finished, so now the virus is released to extract data from where it can – which, now that we're in the NSN, is the avatars."

"I don't have any data."

"No, but what you are is a link to your own augs. And anything they can do to hurt Sarif –" Nearly at the door now, but Pritchard stopped, eyes on his. "Do not let it touch you."

For a few moments, he didn't know what to say. "Sarif had you all wrong, didn't he? Sometimes I think you protect him better than I can."

Pritchard said nothing, glowered down at the floor as though it shouldn't be there. Well, if that couldn't be taken as a compliment, it wasn't his problem.

The door, limed with neon blue light, beckoned. He followed the symbol with his finger. Nothing.

"I have to –" Pritchard nudged him out of the way, a flex of violet on both of their shoulders where their avatars touched, and opened the door to... another loading hallway. How fun.

"You know, the inside of your head is kinda boring." He took the lead, didn't turn at the rumble of door closing behind him. "I thought there'd be more wires and computers. And little robots."

"First of all, we're not inside my _head_ – this is a server we both happen to be connected to." Pritchard trotted along beside him. Not his fault he had longer legs. "Secondly, again, I've been hacked. It doesn't usually look like this. Thirdly, I had to get rid of the little robots. After a while the beeping really grates."

"Uh huh. So where we headed, Pritchard? I'm hoping you've got some kind of plan other than just 'run away.'"

Pritchard sniffed. "To the security room, obviously. There's another console in there, not to mention the exit. I put them together so that I can check the security status before I leave. A few more rooms to go."

"Seems like a lot of effort to go through to get to one place."

"If we were still in the lobby I could shuffle the rooms around, but since we can't exactly stay in there, we're going to have to walk." Eyebrows raised, Pritchard gestured to the floor as though conjuring something into existence. "If I'd had known you were so adverse to a little stroll, Jensen, I would have coded you in a funicular to take us straight there."

“I can walk just fine.” Interesting, even as a shiny gold ornament he could growl. “That thing. The virus. Can it follow us?”

“It can. The doors and walls have a certain amount of security, but like I said, it'll find a way through eventually. I don't know how long we have. You saw how fast it went through the replica avatar I sent its way.”

“That's what it was?”

“Convincing, right?” A flash of teeth, Pritchard's famous self-congratulatory smile. “Phee gave me the idea. I should have realised before that it couldn't be you. Guest avatar.” Pritchard's stare snagged a heartbeat too long. "Hmm, gold. It suits you."

He was about to say something snarky back, something childish like 'well, your weird purple scales don't suit you,' but Pritchard had turned to the door, passed fingers over the symbol.

The number five flashed above the door. Blue again. What was it with Pritchard and blue things?

He stepped through without looking, ahead of Pritchard. The floor opened to a platform as wide and as long as a bus, lit with a single large panel of light above. Railing around the edges, tall enough for someone to lean over, rest their elbows on and look down. Down at what?

Without waiting for Pritchard, he placed his hands on the railing at the front of the platform, peered over the top.

It took a moment for the image to translate in his head and his eyes to adjust to the dark. Grey rectangles stretched out below between more grey rectangles. A road. Sidewalk. Buildings. What he had mistaken for black ceiling was pricked with light – stars, wisps of cloud.

"A city?"

Opposite, further than he wanted to think about, the sky faded into a wall, a platform similar to the one they stood on, and another door. So far away he couldn't even see the symbol.

Pritchard closed the door, turned, eyes on the ground again. He stared back out across the expanse, at the tops of buildings and the clearing of a park. An actual city. "Did you... make all of this?"

"Of course." That pissy little sniff again. Pritchard stood beside him, hand on the rail. "You realise it's just for a game? It's not finished. The insides of the buildings still need textures, and I need to fix the glitch in the third quadrant –" he pointed to the area down by the right, " – but it's still playable –"

"Just a game? Are you kidding? How long did it take you?"

"A while." His awe touched Pritchard's lips into a small smile. "I started the first night Sarif got the NSN machine. He asked me to check over it, security-wise, and I set up my own server. Decided to... see what limits this machine has."

"And you built a city." Street lights flicked on, lit up the sidewalk. No sounds of traffic, or people. "So, what's the name of the game?"

" _Killer Run._ "

"Yeah. It would be. Couldn't have made _Happy Bunny Sunshine Land_ , could you?"

"That vote lost by a narrow margin." Pritchard pointed across the gap. "We need to get over to that other platform. It's a thousand meter stretch, and we're going to have to cross the city to get to it."

"See, here's where you should've put the funicular."

"Just get moving, Jensen."

A narrow staircase hugged the wall from the platform, led them down to street level. Thick glass separated them from the sudden start of the city. Looked like someone had placed a huge bowl down in the middle of Detroit and carved around it, left roads to nowhere and buildings half-buried in the room's vast walls. Never seen anything like it. Did other people make things like this? Could they? Just how 'clever' was Pritchard?

Against the black floor, the glowing triangle caught his eye right away. Looked like his C.A.S.I.E warning symbol – only purple instead of red. The same shade of colour as the shards that swept over Pritchard's body. "Hey," he stood at the edge, and the violet light reflected off his gold, gleamed along the sides when he rotated his wrist, "what's this?"

"A memory cluster. We use it to keep score." Pritchard peered through the glass, then stiffened, looked back at him. "Don't –"

His fingers caught in the light. It shone between them like the summer sun through a canopy. Megan would have called it pretty. Before he could pull them away, two figures stepped from the light. Lines of blue created them, left them transparent. One formed into a ghostly Pritchard, surprise surprise, and the other a woman, a head shorter than Pritchard, her hair cropped to her chin and around her face. Impossible to tell the colour. She smiled at a point a few meters to the left of where he stood, hoisted a gun half her size over her shoulder.

"Three hundred and thirty to two hundred and ninety," she said, accent Spanish – no, Italian, "even though Nukes cheated."

"I didn't _cheat_." Hologram-Pritchard glared at her, but it softened with a smile. The woman laughed, poked the muzzle of her gun into Pritchard's chest.

"With shooting like that, maybe you should have."

A fizzle of light, and the holograms vanished back into the triangle.

So, Pritchard had a friend. That was an even more impressive feat than the city.

"You just have to _poke_ , don't you?" Pritchard, real-Pritchard, grabbed his wrist, moved it out of the light. Bursts of violet covered gold. "Have to touch. You're like a toddler, Jensen."

He pulled his wrist away, but the invisible smile on his face bled into his voice. "I like your girlfriend."

"Don't start. She isn't, not that that's any of your concern." Pritchard squinted into the light of the memory cluster. "She's a friend, she built her own NSN machine. And she doesn't like people knowing about her. You won't –" An almost child-like worry tightened Pritchard's face. "You won't tell Sarif, will you? I don't show her any data or anything about the company, all we do is play this game."

"You're sure she can't see anything about Sarif Industries?”

“Positive.”

Damn, without C.A.S.I.E, how was he supposed to know? “If you're sure she's not a threat. But when this is all over, we're going to have a meeting about unauthorised visitors. Maybe it's best if you let the champion of _Dead Run_ retire."

" _Killer Run_. And... fine. No more guests."

He hadn't expected Pritchard to cave so easily. Maybe the place meant more than just a way to goof off. The hours that must have been spent building the city, the rooms – he could see why Pritchard wouldn't give that up so easily.

"Hey, don't worry." He couldn't quite bring himself to give Pritchard's avatar a pat on the back, so he bumped a fist against its upper arm, sent a purple flurry over his hand. "We'll kick that asshole and his ugly pet out of your head. Let's get ourselves through this room."

Pritchard blinked down at where the purple shards faded, one eyebrow raised in bemusement. No angry protests at the contact, so no wasted time bitching at each other. Great, they were getting along just fine.

The glass wall lowered, slid into the ground with a faint pneumatic hiss. Beyond, a dingy street, lit only by a flickering street lamp, the buildings around it tall, faceless. Something big and hungry bellowed a block to their left.

Pritchard glanced at him, nodded. He inclined his gold faceplate in return.

They stepped over the threshold together, into the dark city.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could write dialogue between Adam and Pritchard for days. 
> 
> Also, some Shadowchild, because don't tell me those two nerds don't meet up in virtual reality to play weird FPS games with each other, and don't tell me Shadowchild doesn't dominate.
> 
> Next chapter: more Adam poking memory clusters, because he can't keep his hands to himself.


	3. Those You Break Along the Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pritchard and Jensen travel across the NSN city, and find darker things than the virus.

 

Two AM arrived in caffeinated splendour, the third mug of coffee already half-empty, but still hot in David's hand. 

The gritty dregs from the other two cups caught on his tongue. Bad coffee, but he'd drained them both steadily, barely registered the milk and lack of sugar. When he set the empty mugs down on the desk, some twitchy guard on the door took them, brought him another all the way from the cafeteria. Should've told them not to bother – enough adrenaline kicked in when his infolink pinged him out of sleep to keep him awake for the rest of the month – but hell, his hands needed something to occupy them. If shit coffee kept him from strangling someone, then it'd have to do.

His chair faced the NSN machine, and aside from having to go piss out all that coffee, his ass hadn't left it. No telling what Frank and Adam were doing in there. Until they got out, the chair might as well be home. He'd ordered everyone else to leave the room, but they still murmured in the background of the hall.

Adam sat, a sleeping king on a throne of metal and wires, while Frank played the part of loyal subject, back against the side of the chair, legs in front, chin to chest and locks of hair draping over a pale face. The NSN machine's hum never rose above their breathing.

At least with them like this he didn't have to put up with the whining and bickering. Get the two of them in a room together and it became a school yard. Frank couldn't compromise, wouldn't compromise. Would double down hard and fast. Everything was either black or white, right or wrong, friend or foe, and it took a damn miracle for any reconsideration. Adam made for a good counter to that bullshit, but the resulting grudge ran so deep it was practically searching for oil. Last time they'd both been in his office, the grinding of teeth rivalled a VTOL in volume levels, and the glaring could've set his desk on fire.

Good at what they both did - no, _great_ at what they both did - but some basic civility wouldn't kill them.

Frank's hand trembled, then twitched, curled fingers on the floor.

He hit the dregs of coffee, set the mug aside without taking his eyes away. Hands. Fingers maybe the most useful thing they'd evolved as a species, aside from the brain. Good, but could be better, could always be better.

Dark hair flattened against the NSN machine when Adam's head rolled back a little, and the small groan didn't really register past his swarming thoughts. Someone took the empty mug away, replaced it with a fresh one.

A hand for a hacker. Increased nerve-impulse receptors for faster typing? There would have to be more lubrication fluid for the joints - didn't want a repeat of the combusting _Themis_ series - and it'd have to have a matching neural aug, no sense giving the ability to increase typing speed when the brain couldn't catch up.

His own augmented fingers rested warm under his chin. This time, Frank's twitch ran from hand to shoulder.

_Why'd you do it, Frank?_ He leaned back, a sigh heavy in his chest. Behind him, whispers had floated all night, snatches of theory and gossip. No doubt the security guards spread the juicy details to the scientists. If the press got hold of it, they'd have a fucking field day. Picus would have that smug bitch, Cassan, wondering on live TV about the dangers of rogue Sarif Industries employees. Who knew, someone looking for a faster pay day could be dialling them right now. Athene played a great gatekeeper, but he wouldn't wake her for anything, not at her age, not at this time of night.

Mutters at the door behind him, then more footsteps, different to the guard's heavy clop of boots. Tapping, almost dainty. A moment of considering silence, then the fractious hiss of a lighter.

He didn't look around. "You can't smoke in here."

"I thought not." A mutinous click, and the lighter shut off. “So, David.” In that clipped British accent, the amusement was hard to miss. “I hear we may be having some trouble of the augmented variety?”

“Hope I didn't drag you out of bed, Kerry.” It sure didn't look like it – when Kerry walked past him to inspect the occupants of the NSN machine, black, shiny shoes peeked out from under charcoal slacks, and hadn't he seen that jacket at the R&D meeting on Thursday? “But yeah, you could damn well say we have a problem – Adam caught Frank passing off documents. Encrypted, important documents. Not the Tempest blueprints, he didn't get that far” he said at Kerry's indrawn breath, “so don't worry about your baby. But payment details. HR information. Got some people going through what he sent, but he was _digging_ , Kerry. Scraping away layer by layer. Looks like the only reason he didn't get to sending the contracts and blueprints is because Adam interrupted him.”

Kerry's eyes could unnerve the fiercest military client over the meeting table – something about lizard-like slits for pupils and the typical white of Isolay irises really plucked a primal level of unease – and even he couldn't resist that jolt when they found his. “Sounds like you'd be better off calling the police than me.”

“Adam thought there might be something other than just espionage and theft. Some kinda problem with Frank's aug, maybe. I took a look, he updated right before this happened.”

Kerry's lips twitched. “Yes, I remember the emails he sent us about the delay. Had the entire software team foaming at the mouth. Sorry, but perhaps you can have some sort of conversation with him about tact when he wakes up?”

“It'd be the third one this year.” Another swallow of coffee – Christ, was it getting _worse?_ – and he stood, knees creaking with the effort. “Is that theory even possible? Could an aug malfunction do that? I mean, I helped design the damn thing, never heard of one making someone steal before.”

“Could be some outside factors, certainly.” Kerry crouched beside Pritchard, fingers under that sharp wedge of chin, tilting until Pritchard's head lay back against the NSN machine. A flutter of eyelids, a sliver of grey, but no more than that in response. “Back at Isolay – this was the Lima facility, understand – we performed a reversal on a woman who thought she was turning into the Devil because of her optic aug. Attacked three people before someone brought her in. Classic AP, with bonus Biblical imagery. But our man Pritchard here is evaluated annually, I know that for a fact.”

The coffee cup almost cracked in his hand. “Don't talk to me about AP, Kerry, don't even start. Frank's fine. He didn't even mention his neural aug during evaluation. It's not that. It can't be that.”

“ _The psychological damage is far more dangerous than David Sarif seems to realise!”_ He'd watched in his office with Athene, her anger silent where his was loud, the words _'William Taggart speaks at Humanity Front conference'_ rolling across the bottom of the screen. Taggart had paced the stage, animated, like a beseeching politician. Or some flamboyant circus pony prancing for applause. _“The studies are clear, and the results fully available for anyone to read. Those who are augmented grieve for their lost humanity, and too many of these poor souls will go on to suffer from augmentation psychosis – that's just what the facts say, ladies and gentlemen. Sarif's efforts at playing God are costing people their minds.”_

Such pure, undiluted bullshit.

The coffee cup clunked back down on the desk. “It's not AP.”

“No. Not likely.” Kerry's thumb slid to Frank's hairline where the wire attached to the NSN machine led, exposed the micro-port of the neural aug. “I am trying to consider the alternatives. Damage to the augmentation. Damage to the brain. Personally, I'm inclined towards Occam's razor, that he stole under his own volition for his own reasons, but I can't check until he's out of this machine.” Those eyes fell back on his. “You were awfully quick to put him in here, David.”

“Adam's sake. He wouldn't let it go.” He jerked one shoulder in a shrug. “If there is, he'll get to the bottom of it. What's the point of having security if you can't trust them with stuff like this?”

“ _I've never been much good at following orders, David,”_ Adam told him, Frank limp in those prosthetic arms.

_I know_ , he could have replied, _Radford told me all about it, son._

God forbid that conversation ever came up.

Kerry stood, stepped past Frank and tested the joints of Adam's hands with clinical attention. “Am I here to do another augmentation removal, David?”

His hesitation weighed heavy for a moment. “When you got up here... first thing I was gonna tell you to do was rip my tech out of his head. So I could ship him right back to prison without losing an aug.”

“And now?”

Frank's head slumped forward again, strings of hair falling like a veil around that pale face. Another tremor of fingers on the floor. “Now I want Occam's razor to go to Hell. If Adam's right... this could be a great opportunity. For all of us, especially Frank.”

“Oh, I know that look, David.” A casual brush of palm against suit, and Kerry faced him. “Your orders?”

Adam already proved he'd made the right choice before. Why not again? A gift. One that would improve Sarif Industries further – two members of staff, two of the best, heavily augmented for their own particular fields. And hell, he could spare the neuropozyne.

“Sure, he did this, but... I mean, it's not like Adam didn't let us down in the labs...” Kerry followed his pacing, head tilted to the side. Yeah, this was the right thing to do. “If Adam's right, bring Frank down to the labs right away. I think he's earned himself an upgrade.”

 

“Okay, okay – what about this?” The vendor jogged beside them, its holographic mesh phasing blue through skin dark and hair every few steps. He hadn't programmed it to relentlessly pursue wandering players, but over time its AI had... slipped a little. “SKM three-oh-nine.” More holographic lines sketched out the skeleton of a thick assault rifle, complete with chainsaw blade under the barrel. The vendor held it up like a father showing off his newborn. “Standard ammo is plentiful, but there's explosive rounds scattered across the city. Just try not to blow up the rest of your squad.”

Not even at the end of the first street, and Jensen sighed, metallic and static all in one. “So, he's just coming with us, huh?”

Around them, the tower blocks loomed, grey obelisks against the sky. No sign of corruption. Not yet. “It's supposed to sell weapons, that's all it knows.” One step over the familiar crack in the asphalt, another over the lid of a crushed garbage can. The vendor tilted the gun in his direction. He shook his head. “For the last time, _no_ , we don't need any guns.”

“Oh.” The vendor flexed its fingers against the gun. It strolled at Jensen's side as though invited along on this little walk. “...Knives?”

Before he could hiss out a reply, Jensen's gold-facet avatar turned, light from a stuttering street lamp catching the planes of its face. “Why does it have a chainsaw blade attachment?”

“For a twenty-five percent damage bonus.”

“That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.” Scorn rumbled like electronic thunder under the avatar. “Almost as bad as the explosive rounds.”

“Hey,” the vendor's idle animation kicked in, a hand through its short dark hair and then rubbing at the stubble of its chin, “they're good for if you meet a crowd, or need to make some noise. Gotta watch out for that splash damage, though.”

“The amount of explosive you'd need to pack into each round would make them too big for that barrel... and they'd just ignite the moment they were fired.”

The vendor tilted its head to the side with a polite, blank stare. Not programmed with confusion, especially when someone started spouting the realistic logistics of guns. “This baby also takes incendiary rounds – light 'em up!”

“Incendiary rounds make even _less_ sense –”

Obviously Jensen didn't realise the pointlessness of trying to argue with an AI whose prime directive was to _sell weapons_. He made his sigh loud and exaggerated, cut through their bickering. “Jensen, it's a _game_ , the guns are supposed to be over-the-top. It's meant to be for fun.” An alley led to the left, darker than the sky. If they cut through they could avoid the maze of towers ahead. “You remember fun, don't you? It's shooting at things that don't cry and beg.”

“Yeah, well, not exactly getting that 'fun' feeling right now, Francis, kinda just worrying why your friend's been so quiet.” Jensen considered the alley entrance, peered into the dark with a soldier's suspicion. “And what he meant when he said he'd seen me in your memory clusters. Why would I be in them? I don't come in here to play shoot 'em ups with you, got better things to do with my time.”

“Why shouldn't you be? I programmed your HUD, your infolink channel, your GPL tracker, converted some of the data into compatible streams. That way I can keep a track of any changes over time, not to mention see how they perform while you're in the field. It's not my fault you need someone to watch over you.”

The dark of the alley closed around them. He fell back, let Jensen lead, the vendor bobbing along beside him and nudging him with its elbow, the whisper of “Ten-millimeter, custom sight, only five-hundred credits for my favourite customer!” almost lost under the memory of a hospital bed and the insistent blip of machines.

No, not his fault at all.

The alley opened to a street lined with the husks of abandoned cars and lit by the dull orange of dying street lights. The vendor picked its way around some of the junk, and floated right through others. Bad collision. Back to the wall and feet apart, Jensen scanned the street as though expecting a raving mob to descend. “I'm not sure I like the idea of you spying on me.”

“Well, you don't have any choice.”

“Not in here. When we get out, we'll have a little talk about that. First thing on my list.” Nearly a purr of promise, a tiger threatening the just-out-of-reach deer.

He couldn't even begin to turn the snicker into a cough. “I have a list too. Changing the default guest avatar skin to a dog is _high_ on there. You know, something to match your personality a little better than... modern art.”

“Yeah, well, someone told me it _suited_ me.”

A stupid thing to say, an instant and rare regret. That was what happened when you let your mouth start before your brain. Out of all the random colours the machine could have picked, it decided to make Jensen bright, new, elegant, one half of Sarif's colours. He bent, pretended to examine the closest car for signs of virus corruption. “In the sense that metal gold is barely reactive, soft, and only holds value because we give it value.”

Jensen's elbow went through the vendor's shoulder. “He thinks I'm valuable.”

“Yeah.” The vendor beamed, blue lines furiously knitting a smile. “You'd win a lot of credits.”

Dear God, they were working together.

Ahead, the road fell into a cavern of his own design, a scar across the entire street, too far for a person to jump. Didn't want to make things too easy. The yellow hull of a school bus hung at a precarious angle over the gap, its frame protecting the health kit under one of the back seats. More than once he'd hauled himself down the aisle, or made a stand at the choke point of the door. Directly across, on the other side of the ruined road, a figure paced back and forth, stared with eyes eaten by the darkness. Jensen stiffened beside him with a ripple of gold, cat-alert in an instant. “Pritchard?”

“Twitchy, Jensen?”

"That's one of your things, right?" The figure paced, too-long arms hanging low past its knees, a glimmer of metal claws instead of fingers. Jensen's avatar face tracked its movements. "Anyone ever tell you you have a pretty twisted imagination? Really starting to wish I had my augs in this machine."

The vendor opened its mouth, but he got there before it could start waxing poetic about the benefits of a customised shotgun or a rocket launcher. "Why waste the time? Were you even listening when I said this is a game? The most it'll do is jump out and slash at you - even if it makes contact it won't do anything other than knock some assigned numbers down. _Killer Run_ was always more about the atmosphere."

"Yeah, virus, freaky monster. Great atmosphere. Like how the streets are basically a maze. Couldn't just put a straight road leading to the exit, could you?"

He hoped his bristling was adequately represented on his avatar's face. "It's a solid design for a game –"

"Yeah, well, we're not playing a game right now, are we, Francis? More like trying to protect Sarif from your bad life-choices.” The edge in Jensen's voice cut. How the hell was he supposed to know this would happen?

“Some things even I can't plan for. Nobody can.” If he threw the lab incident at Jensen's feet, they'd be done as co-workers. “Just think of this as another one of your missions, if that helps.”

“My missions don't usually involve the abstract, Francis.” Gold flashed when Jensen's avatar hand came up to smooth across the faceplate. “Do we have to get across this gap? Can't you code in a bridge or something? You made that fake avatar before.”

At least he had eyes to roll in here. He held up the wrist screen and flexi keyboard. “Certainly I could, if we had about thirty minutes.” At Jensen's exasperated breath, anger snapped somewhere deep inside. “What? Do you think building all this took me a night? I apologise for being a mere mortal, Jensen, I can only –”

“All right, okay, I get it. Sorry.”

Had Jensen ever apologised to him before? He inhaled slowly, softened his voice. “The avatar... was already there, I just had to replicate it, tick a few protocol boxes. A bridge would be a lot more work. We have to go around.”

“Another tour through Hell City? Feels like I'm on the world's worst date.”

A curl in his stomach, in his real body, back in the real world. Distracting. A date with Jensen probably meant a firing range, vending machine snacks under florescent lights, the romantic sounds of car horns and drunk lunatics. He'd ask Doctor Reed, were she still alive, but that would have only earned him a haughty look, maybe a snarl. “It'll be an even worse date if the virus catches up. Come on.”

The road hooked another left, led through a park with rusted gates and brown grass, a tangle of bare sticks for a hedge. The vendor vanished in a flash of blue at the entrance. Light posts no higher than his thigh lined the path – most dead or lying on their sides, but a few still spluttered dim orange. A memory cluster spilled purple light over a child's swing he'd programmed to creak forward and back of its own volition every couple of minutes ( _cliché_ , Shadowchild pointed out when he showed her.) Too many memory clusters scattered around the city – though he'd never considered the possibility of other people poking around. Shadowchild's avatar had limited permissions – no touching the memory clusters that weren't for scores – but she probably wouldn't pry even if he allowed.

The one shining near them had the combined feeds from his own aug, some security cameras in the offices on the day of the lab attack. Only once he'd actually watched it back, and spent half of it staring at the floor, anything to avoid the images of people cowering under their desks, wondering if the distant pop of guns would move closer.

If Jensen even _considered_ going near that memory cluster he'd raise hell, but instead, Jensen patted one of the light posts as they passed, and the simulated rust clung to gold. “Your friend's been quiet.”

“Maybe you scared him off.” In the distance, the exit platform jutted from the wall. Ahead of the virus and its corruption, but by how much? “I'm sure he's helping his little pet along. All the more reason not to dawdle, wouldn't you say, Jensen?”

“Yeah, right.” An abandoned bicycle in their path, the back wheel spinning with a sinister squeal. Jensen wove around it, movement fluid, like a pacing big cat. “Hey, Pritchard, tell me something.”

No _Francis_ this time. “I could tell you a lot of things.” 

“Right. Of course. When Sarif hired you, after he dragged you out of prison, weren't you tempted to bust your friends out? Get back together and help them finish what you started?”

“Is this a... friendly question or an interrogation? Will you cuff me if I don't answer? Throw me in a cell?”

“I'm not SWAT, not any more. This is just between us.”

“Oh, goodie, we're pretending to be friends, are we?” When Jensen shrugged, he folded his arms. “Fine. I suppose I was tempted. Maybe for a little while. But what could I do? Sarif gave me a job, and an augmentation, both of which were leashes. The serial number on the aug... I could have fried the tracker, if I really wanted to –”

“But you wouldn't break your contract.”

A heavy cloud passed in front of the moon. The stars were swallowed in one gulp by the grey. Sarif sat across the table from him, pushed a piece of paper his way. Anything to get out. The others were gone anyway, weren't they? Different prisons, out of reach. No more late nights working on code with Spider and discussing the various merits of video game characters, no more teasing Sparrow that the blue in her hair had faded to a greeny-grey.

And no more Phoenix, no more being angry at a company on someone else's behalf. Just a cage at his back, an opportunity in front.

Movement at the edge of his vision, close, too close. His avatar spiked violet on his arm, layered over gold fingers.

He stepped away, pulled back into himself, hand over his arm as though burned. Behind them, the _squeak squeak squeak_ of the wheel, the faint whistle of wind through bare branches. The beep of hospital machine in his own head. Felt like he was back in the LIMB clinic, sitting in that chair -

Jensen's own hand pulled back, slow. It took a few moments for him to find his voice, but when he did he made sure it didn't waver.

“I don't like owing people.” Between his fingers, his avatar flared, purple layering like fish scales, as though it pined for the gold. “But I owe him loyalty. I owe him that much, don't you think, Jensen?”

No subtle eyebrow raising or lip twitching from a guest avatar, but the faceplate lowered, tilted to the left. “I think you're still wearing that leash.”

“No doubt you'd prefer I was still locked up, eating terrible food and hiding in corners so the gangs don't notice me?” His avatar settled back down. Even inside VR the lump in his throat made itself known. “I'd rather have a leash than a cage.”

“Better to have neither.” Gold-plated fingers bent, then flexed. “He made sure I have both.”

The squeak of the bike wheel sounded more like a hospital machine's rhythmic beeping than ever. Words seized in his throat. He swallowed them. Nothing to apologise for. “We should get moving, the virus won't wait for small talk.”

“If you say so –”

“I _do_.” He turned on his heel, continued down the path. Under the anger, anxiety pulsed with a frantic beat.

Jensen caught up after a moment, fell into step with him, but a little further apart than before.

The silence between them mocked him. Should have said something else. Anything else. Not too late, say _something_ , dammit –

A flicker of hologram interrupted, mesh sprouting from the grass like some alien weed. It formed the outline of the vendor, flashed as the skin texture loaded in. Good, those two could fight about guns while he tried to do something a little more productive. Not far to the end of the park now.

"Pritchard –"

He didn't stop or turn around. "Can we _just_ get to the security room, Jensen? I've used up all the energy I have dealing with you today –"

" _Pritchard!_ "

He turned on his heel, ready for another fight, another up close and personal fight with their avatars laying over each other, and stopped dead when the vendor staggered onto the path.

"Hi- hi- again! What about..." Its voice slipped, blurred into a mechanical whine, static underneath fizzing the words into incomprehensible sounds before snapping back to normal, "- rocket launcher?"

“What's wrong with him?” Jensen slid around the vendor, every step a wary movement. The vendor grinned in response, one hand curled up to its chest, the other at its shoulder. A gun they couldn't see.

“This baby'll put a hole in... in...” A blink of simulated eyes, the same shade of blue he'd given the doors and lights. Hands fell away from its chest, and in the dim half-light the tips of fingers darkened, bled to a black that crawled up to knuckles, then wrists. The vendor continued, with all the determination of a loyal dog. “Anything. Ten thousand credits, just for- just for- for-”

“Jensen,” he backed away, raised his voice over the vendor's stammering, “we have to go. Now.”

“Is it the virus?”

“Catch on quick, don't you?” Fear shot a healthy dose of anger into his voice. “Come on! Why are you just _standing_ there? We have to go, we have to run –”

“What about him? Can't we do something?” Jensen hovered like some kind of especially annoying origami bee. The vendor beamed again, even as the black took its arm up to the elbow. “Help it somehow?”

“We can help _ourselves_ by running. For God's sake, it's an AI! It's basically a computer program, Jensen!” Even as he said it, Jensen took a step closer to the vendor, concern a tilt and flash of gold. “Don't!”

Something in his voice finally got through that thick skull. The vendor reached out, its animation for _give me a hand_ if it got knocked down by any enemies or splash damage, but Jensen stepped away. “Sorry.”

For a moment, the vendor teetered, hologram twitching in and out with flashes of light. Its cheeks bloomed black spots, mould spores on rotting wood. A sweep of gold, and Jensen nudged at him with an elbow, a shoulder, ushering him away as though shepherding a wandering child. “Dammit. Let's go.”

“Are you sure you don't want to sit and have a picnic first?” But even as he said it his feet shifted into a run instead of a walk. “Maybe offer it some tea before it takes over your augs?”

For once, Jensen ignored him, stuck by his side as the trees closed on the path and blocked out the sky with their stick branches. Something clawed at their heads as they passed underneath, the impacts like fists through a soft cushion, and followed them on four silent paws, its growls as thick and tangled as its coat. “Leaper,” he said in reply to Jensen's startle. “Ignore it.”

Behind them, the vendor's voice floated down the path, a mix of static and nonsense. When he turned, a shadow kneeled there instead.

The grove of trees ended at a gate. It squealed open when he barrelled into it, chased by the furious howl of the leaper. Another road, this time laid out across in front of them. Left or right? Christ, it had been so long since he'd played in this part of town...

Another howl, and not from the leaper this time. At the beginning of the trees the shadow in the shape of the vendor approached, eyes burning white. Black dripped to the ground, oozed into puddles. Dammit, no, not his city –

Jensen stuck to his side when he stopped on the sidewalk. “Which way?”

Right would lead... past the empty museum on the corner, then the half-collapsed bank, the road sweeping up past the wall and doubling back on itself.

“Left. We'll hit the river, and then it's not far to the exit.” Not too far to find out whatever Phee had planned for his brain. One thing at a time. Focus on getting Jensen out before they worried about things like his biochip.

“Thank God.” Jensen hopped over a car hood, kicked at the hand that grabbed from underneath. “This isn't my kind of game.”

 

Most of the nightmares started the same: wings sliding from his back, curved and elegant, the feathers as hard as stone. Like he would his missing human arms, he pushed them out to the side, flared them and flapped. So real he even felt the draft on his feet. All fine when he took off, and then the swooping exultation in his stomach dropped as the sun glared down, hotter and hotter, and his feathers detached, became a blizzard as he screamed and fell to earth. _No, no, let me fly a little bit longer, don't take my wings –_

He hit the ground; he woke sweating, tears in his eyes.

But the worst nightmares struck rarely, and at random, kept him on his toes and awake for hours. No beginning to them, just his augmented arm-blade snicking out, then a shoulder in his other hand. Sometimes Megan, sometimes Sarif. In the dream he always bared his teeth before burying the blade in their chest, some ecstasy overtaking any fear or guilt. He swallowed their surprised moan, ripped the blade out.

He woke too easily from those dreams.

Was that what he could become, if Pritchard's little friend had his way? A monster, rampaging through Sarif Industries, turning offices into tombs until the cops, people he'd known, came to put him down like a rabid dog?

Never happen, said a voice in the back of his head, but they'd hacked into Pritchard's aug easily enough, and he had... considerable more augs to control.

Pritchard stopped at another junction, lips rubbing against each other, thinking, considering, like Sarif with that damn baseball.

A risky glance behind, and the vendor had dragged itself through the gate of the park, out onto the road. Not even remotely human now, just black and featureless, white eyes glazed. It shrieked, the sound of something dying, and staggered in their direction.

It had reached out to him. Just an AI, just a computer program, but it wanted help. And, again, nothing he could do.

"Which way, Pritchard?"

If his voice sounded too strained, too thick, Pritchard didn't seem to notice. "Right. Not the road, the alley." Avatar flashed purple again. He'd touched it in the park to see the gold tips of his fingers merge with the violet, and even though sense of touch dulled in this machine, some old intimacy warmed him, like when Megan would rest her head on his chest, or take one of his hands in hers. He'd missed it, yeah, no denying that.

A bellow from behind. Not the vendor, further away.

The ledge he'd looked down on the city from dissolved in a sludge of black, like the side of an iceberg sheeting down into the ocean. The virus clung to the wall, cracks jagged from its spider legs. Ugly fucking thing. It leapt down, disappeared among the buildings. Had it seen them?

He prodded Pritchard into moving a little faster, ignoring the indignant squawk, and slipped into the alley. Another of Pritchard's memory clusters stuck to the wall, illuminated piles of garbage and what looked like a lump of flyblown meat in a doorway (why the hell did Pritchard's imagination have to be so... imaginative?). Strands of purple light stretched, reached for him like wispy fingers. He followed Pritchard's example and hugged the opposite wall, but even then voices reached his ears, muttering inside the center of the triangle as though muffled through thick glass, fading in and out.

_" – didn't even listen to me after she stuck her nose in –"_

_"– yes, annoying, but what if he's –"_

Pritchard's voice and... Malik's? Or that woman in the other memory cluster?

Ahead, Pritchard edged around a shopping cart. Inside the wire mesh a box glowed orange. Happy cartoon bullet on the outside. Ammo.

"There's gotta be more fun ways for you to spend your evenings." He poked the box, unsurprised when it dissolved into thin air. Pritchard glared over a purple ripple of shoulder. "You know. Go out, go to a bar. Pick someone up, take them back home." Instead of moving around the cart, he nudged it out of the way with his hip. The spike of perverse curiosity drilled way deep down. Pritchard at a bar, probably drinking some weird fruity cocktail, chatting up a stranger, or... _trying_ to chat up a stranger.

Weirder things had happened, much more weird than Pritchard lying drunk and naked on a bed, fucking some anonymous guy. Or woman. How would he know what Pritchard liked, if anything at all?

" – baser instincts, and anyway –"

"What?" Damn, they were almost at the end of the alley? Probably shouldn't be thinking so hard about his co-workers getting laid. "...I was paying attention..."

Another glare. He'd answer with a benign smile if he had lips. "I _said_ , some of us have better things to do than waste our time with baser instincts. Some of us are slightly more capable of higher thought."

"Hey, don't put yourself down, Francis, I bet your baser instincts kick in just fine after a couple of Martinis."

The glare turned suspicious. Good job they didn't make NSN-capable tasers, or he'd be a block of electrified gold right about then. "Spare me ... whatever insinuations you want to make. I don't have the time for the long and arduous trial of trying to explain what is psychologically wrong with you."

Ouch, hit a nerve. "That's fine, it'll save me the boredom of having to listen."

"Focus." Pritchard stopped at the exit of the alley, head tilted around the corner. He was head of security, wasn't that his job? Pritchard probably didn't even know how to hold a gun. "The river's on the other side of the street. See it?"

No choice in the narrow space but to squeeze next to Pritchard's shoulder. Purple shards said hello to his gold, and he kept his hand by his side. No touching.

Across the cracked asphalt, the buildings stopped, left a gap for the ornate stone bridge. Its carved railing seemed out of place for the rest of the city, old and European, but at least they'd finally got a clear straight section that went on for a while. If he had to watch Pritchard dither at another fork in the road he'd probably pull his hair in frustration... not that he had any hair to pull here. Under the bridge, the river flowed in a sluggish pull, bones caught in the current like sticks. Beyond, the wall of the room rose, a giant cliff of jagged black rocks, and the teasing blue glow of door so close.

"So what are we waiting for? Let's just run for it. We can get across that bridge in one, two minutes tops." Even faster if he had his damn augs. Strange how much he missed the things that made him less human. "I'm not sitting around waiting to be... infected."

"I can't see anything that's going to slow us down out there." Pritchard sighed, and the purple insect wings that spread across lips shivered. "All right, follow me."

_No, you follow me_ , snapped back the security side, the SWAT side of him that preferred to give orders rather than take, but a scream from the entrance of the alley jolted him into action. Pritchard darted across the road like a suicidal rabbit, but he paused, checked behind for the vendor's progress. It slicked along the wall, stumbled like a drunk against the brick. Black drew in the memory cluster light. No reflection. Its jaw flopped to its chest, dark strings threading through the cavern of its mouth. Poor thing, poor fucking bastard.

He followed Pritchard, skipped over concrete and other debris in the road, hit the bridge running. Up close, the carved railings took the shape of monsters - that thing Pritchard called a leaper crouched, leopard-like in a tree, and joined to it in stone, Mr. Stabby brandished those long metal claws claws. Detail etched every eye, every scale, tooth and tentacle of the city's denizens, many of which he hoped never to actually see.

The first shockwave hit the bridge with a violent rumble. He staggered, damn feet almost tripping over themselves, and one knee hit the ground. Another shock, like some joker decided to whack a comedy-sized mallet into the bridge supports. _Thwack._ And again.

Pritchard ended up flat, kissing the ground after a particularly nasty shock hit. A hysterical laugh threatened, but he pushed it down, kept low and clutched the railing, fingers curled around a bat-winged creature with snout like a dog.

"Pritchard!" Another whack, one that almost dislodged his hold on the railing. "What the hell's going on?"

Fingertips yanking at the ground, Pritchard clawed over to him, eyes wide and stupid with fear. "It- it can't be here, it's supposed to be further downstr-"

A resonating bellow vibrated the air. So close to the source he would have lost his eardrums in the real world. All his gold shards thrummed in response, turned him into a giant tuning fork.

Couldn't think- couldn't think- just the buzz in his head and the ground and the air that-

-stopped.

He exhaled, shaking worse than if he'd been in an out-and-out firefight. God damn this freaky fucking place.

Wide eyes squeezed themselves shut, and Pritchard's grip on the railing could have reduced it to dust. He let the silence grow for a moment. No more shaking, no more roaring.

Couldn't prise Pritchard's hands away, so instead he patted a shoulder. Awkward, but the flash of gold-purple was rewarded with a glare. Better than nothing. "Getting caught up in your own game, Francis? Thought you said these things couldn't hurt us."

"It's not supposed to be here."

The vendor was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the fun bridge ride had sent it overboard. "What isn't?"

Pritchard's eyes darted to the railing, then down to the ground. He got the message.

He rose slowly, wary of any more bridge-jolting, and peered over the railing at the river below.

The water seethed.

Bones caught in the eddies and churned, turned the river into a boiling witch's cauldron. A flash of something breaking through the surface- and then sucked down again. Yellow gleamed, a light that shone from an underwater halo as large as the side of a house. The halo narrowed - the pupil widened, jerked around to the left.

He threw himself back down beside Pritchard. "Don't think small, do you?"

"Is it infected?"

"Couldn't tell." If it was, God help them. Thing looked like it could eat the entire city in five minutes. "Gotta keep moving, no use sitting here. We'll use this wall as cover, okay? Just keep down low and follow me." 

Pritchard's glare mellowed into an almost-smile. "Sometimes you almost sound like you know what you're doing, Jensen."

"Sometimes I almost do." He brushed past Pritchard, ducked enough so that that he could glance over the top of the wall from time to time, and moved as quickly as possible.

Water slapped in waves on the other side of the wall. A low rumbling, like a deep, alien purr, shivered through stone under his hand. They edged along, halfway across the bridge when Pritchard's breath hitched. He stopped. "What? What's -"

A squeal of mechanical hunger ripped apart the rest of his words. The virus skittered along the bridge towards them, the vendor shuffling behind like a half-dead dog.

Fantastic.

He straightened, tense and ready to run again -

The river exploded upwards.

A shower of water droplets hit him, then a huge wave with a _whomph_. For a couple of blank, terrifying seconds, he couldn't breathe. Water gushed up his nose, down his throat, into his ears. His legs gave out to the insistent drive of water, but something hard hit his back with an impact that jarred.

The water receded as quickly as it had arrived. He sat, back to the wall on the opposite side of the bridge. At least he could breathe normally once the water vanished - no more spluttering or choking on a lungful of liquid thanks to the NSN.

Pritchard stayed tethered to the wall, shaking off water drops that disappeared as soon as they hit the ground. And behind –

If he had eyes he would have blinked, rubbed them like a corny cartoon to see if they were working properly.

The nearest thing that came close was _octopus_ , considering the tentacles that coiled through the air, each with suckers as tall as him, but too many tentacles, way too many, and eyes out of proportion, five in all, huge things that nearly covered its main bulk. It _towered_. So close and so huge he had to crane his non-existent neck back just to see the top of the thing. Skin shimmered, roiling from a murky ink colour to bright Caribbean waves.

Forget eye-rubbing; if he had eyes he would be glaring them straight at Pritchard. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

A tentacle the width of a tree trunk flopped over the bridge, straight across their path, dangled in the water on the other side. Another on the entrance of the bridge. Barred them in there with the virus, which staggered back to its feet.

Another bellow, like the hollow cries of a thousand whales. He didn't have ears to cover, so he fumbled for the wall, waited it out. Under the noise, Pritchard's words were lost, but he could read lips well enough: _Run_.

Great for them, where could they go?

The virus sprinted for them, legs stabbing the ground with each step.

Blue flashed through the air, a blurred tentacle. Another thwack, this time into the side of the virus. Black and blue mixed, bled together. One huge yellow eye stared at the virus, and another at them, the pupil contracting as it focused. Another indigo tentacle joined the fray, curled around the virus and squeezed.

Writhing and spitting, the virus spun, to fast and slippery to hold, a lion that had been poked too many times to ignore. It leaped off the wall, hooked itself into the monster, reared back, and then stabbed deep.

_His blade, sliding into Sarif's chest, you wanted me to be special, here I am, boss, just the way you made me –_

Black spread, overwhelmed the blue. The tentacle monster's shriek would bring the entire ceiling down on their heads. All those stars would end up burying them in rubble.

Tentacles whipped and writhed, one swooping just over his head. The virus clung to the monster like a tick, only instead of drawing blood, it infected. Messed up the code. Reprogrammed. The black crawled up and up, reached those huge yellow eyes. Waves battered the bridge, sprayed water over stone and asphalt. The tentacles reached out – _help me, don't let it_ – stiffened, then relaxed. They fell like enormous slabs of meat from the sky **,** and he yanked Pritchard back out of the way. Yellow dimmed to black.

A hand on the gold shards of his arm. Held there even when the purple spread to his shoulder.

Pritchard stared up at the monster as he had, jaw clenched and brows drawn together. It took him a moment to recognise grief. “The way's clear.”

No more sneering or jibes in his direction. He would have preferred that.

The tentacle hadn't quite moved off the bridge. It looped around itself, still taking up most of the road, a dead snake on a path. The temptation to touch it as he passed, nudge it with his foot or something, glowed strong, but the black started to leak into the bridge around them, chunks falling away into the river. He gave it a wide berth, hustled to the end of the bridge as fast as his gold feet would carry him.

He didn't recognise the other side of the city now. Tower blocks decayed, collapsed without a sound. On the other side of the bridge, Pritchard's menagerie gathered, took slow steps on to the bridge. The bat-winged, dog-faced creature howled, but its wings dragged on the ground like black rags.

“There,” Pritchard pointed to the exit on the wall, still clear and blue. Not so far away now, not unless Pritchard had decided to shape the streets like a labyrinth, which was entirely possible, considering Pritchard's idea of 'fun.'

A twitch of tentacle. Then a jerk. Then a contraction that curled it around. The monster in the river juddered, raised itself with a creak and a groan. Eyes morphed from black to white and filmed over like something dead. The virus sprang back to the bridge, a decaying captain at the head of an undead army. An army that had just gained the equivalent of a tank.

Well, no going back that way.

The monster hauled itself up, tearing chunks out of the bridge, those eyes all fixed on him.

Those tentacles had a damn long reach. They curved through the air, slithered along towards them, ready to grab. His hand snatched Pritchard's wrist, but when he pulled he met resistance. “What the hell? Come on!"

“One moment.” Pritchard held the little keyboard and screen up, tapped away. “Just one moment... There!”

At first he didn't see it, but when Pritchard finally gave into his yanking, an identical Pritchard stood there instead. Another avatar. “Is that going to fool it again?”

“It's not for the virus!”

His feet took him over the end of the bridge and onto the street. A quick glance back, and the monster heaved itself onto the bridge, swiped at Pritchard's replicated avatar. Couldn't see the virus and the other infected creatures behind the tangle of tentacles. A few seconds of distraction was worth it.

Pritchard's wrist didn't twitch out of his hand until they'd buried themselves in the mess of buildings. On this side of the river, the streets grew even more narrow, some cobbled in a way that gave off Victorian England vibes. The buildings, free of any creeping black ooze for now, closed in around them. Alleys veered off, walls and sidewalks bent at crazy angles. Pritchard beside him, quiet, leading him through the streets – right, left, left again, right, left – while the creatures bellowed behind them.

“Hey,” he nudged Pritchard's shoulder, got a suspicious look in response. “Good thinking with the avatar. Thing.”

Pritchard shrugged. “Well. You weren't going to do anything about it.”

Earlier, he would've been pissed, clenched his jaw and waded into another round of 'who's got the best comeback?' but hell, maybe Pritchard was growing on him. “Yeah, should really step up my game, huh?”

“You really should.” But a smile touched Pritchard's mouth, soft, like the one in the memory cluster with the woman. Did something weird to those already-thin lips, but damn, looked better than a scowl. Skin turned pink from the memory cluster in a nearby doorway, the world's worst blush.

Something blocked out the stars.

They were out of distraction time.

He yanked Pritchard's avatar into the alcove of the doorway. A tentacle glided down the street, investigating, feeling out the alley entrances and hollows. The suckers clung, then tore asphalt, the sidewalk, bricks, left pools of corruption to nibble away at the edges.

It slipped past their alcove like a silent snake, graceful movements an eerie contrast to the lumbering beast that hovered over them. He chanced a look up, saw the snap of a beak, and pulled back in. The tentacle's skin brushed the edges of the alcove, and the stone there decayed in an instant. No way out, though, not with the tentacle barring the way. He pushed Pritchard back against the wall – arms and legs inside the car at all times, please – and held his breath.

The tip of the tentacle, thick and blunt, pushed its way into the doorway, groped with sinuous movement. Over his shoulder, Pritchard's eyes followed every roll and sweep.

“ _She tried to protect him, Frank.”_

He jerked, the memory cluster light spilling over the tentacle. Sarif's voice, straight from the middle of the purple glow. What was –

“ _You and Megan always did have your secrets.”_

Her name tugged, caught, snared.

The tentacle tapped the wall one last time, retreated with a silent, fluid flick. The stars reappeared. He didn't move. Pritchard tried to slip past, but his arm came up, a gold flare that smacked the non-corrupted bricks. A sliver of white around those grey eyes.

“Jensen –”

Purple light throbbed like the pulse of some weakening heartbeat. Underneath, Sarif whispered something about DNA, something about augmentations. Pritchard wrung his avatar hands, eyes darting to the enticing alcove entrance. “Jensen, I think we –”

“Quiet.”

No more hand-wringing, now Pritchard puffed up, all angry rooster with ruffled feathers. “Why don't you –”

“Listen to me.” And whatever angry puppeteer jerked his vocal chords must have scared the shit out Pritchard, because for once he got silence instead of more bitching. “Listen, because I'm more than done with running around your _game_. What's in your damn diary here? Sarif said something about... Megan, about me. What was it?”

Eyes dropped to the floor, not out of fear, out of shame. But those lips stayed shut.

The seconds ticked by. “Fine. There's a quicker way to find out.”

Purple shards flashed, reached for him like beseeching hands. “Don't –”

Light wrapped around his fingers. Any moment, Sarif's hologram would pop up, like Pritchard and that woman –

The light bloomed like a nuclear explosion. He winced away, dropped his hand –

And found himself in front of a wide desk. A huge screen on the back wall showed a baseball game, the runner making a crazed dash for home. Golden sculptures hung from the ceiling, skeletal from where he stood. Portraits on the wall, a fireplace in one corner, and a huge glass window, the lights from Detroit like stars.

Sarif's office.

A blue haze shimmered, lines dissolving and then resketching the mug, the stack of papers on the desk. Sarif himself sat there, fingers under chin, considering Pritchard on the opposite side.

So memory clusters could suck people into them as well? Just great. Enough time, or so he hoped, to dig out Megan's name, and the... secrets.

Sarif's office seemed... normal. When had this taken place? Couldn't have been that long ago – hadn't that mug been one of the standard Christmas company gifts last year? He leaned against the desk, studied Pritchard's face. No help there – Pritchard had stayed more or less the same since the day he'd started.

He pushed at the stack of papers (damn weird hologram stuff didn't budge an inch) when Pritchard leaned forward, mimicked Sarif's hand position. “Why did you think I'd want to know?”

“Just thought you'd wanna see what you'll be working with here, Frank.” Sarif of Christmas Past picked up the top sheets of the paper stack, spread them in front of Pritchard. A cross section of something electronic, shaded with expert precision, words too small for him to make out. Aug blueprints.

Pritchard's eyes flicked over the diagrams, absorbed every word while Sarif glanced back to check the baseball game. After a few moments, Pritchard sent the papers back down. “These are... extensive.”

“His injuries were extensive.” Sarif reached over the desk, tapped at one of the diagrams with an augmented finger. “Should be no problem for you to set up a new Infolink channel, right? And program his GPL?”

“Of course...” Something furrowed Pritchard's brow, turned that general sneer into suspicion. “You're giving him hacking capabilities as well?” And then, before Sarif could answer, “A social enhancer? Really, David? What do you imagine he's going to do with that?”

Sarif leaned forward. “Don't be jealous, Frank, he'll be working in the field –”

“His body won't take all of this.” Pritchard slapped a page back on the desk. “He'd need too much neuropozyne –”

“He doesn't need any neuropozyne. Call it a... quirk of DNA.” Augmented hand brushed a thread off Sarif's sleeve, but those dark eyes stayed on Pritchard. “Lucky you suggested a physical security presence, huh, Frank?”

Pritchard stared right back. “And it was lucky that Doctor Reed just happened to have someone lined up? Someone who doesn't need neuropozyne, someone who already has military training?”

“What else could it be?” Sarif's smile, the same wolfish one he'd seen inside Pritchard's office, flashed and then faded. “She tried to protect him, Frank. She didn't mean for this to happen. Neither did I.”

“You and Megan always did have your secrets.”

“To _protect_ Adam, Frank. You're acting like we planned this – like we wanted the labs attacked! I don't like that, at all.” Sarif stood, hand on a hip, fingers on the other gesturing in Pritchard's direction. “We lost some good people down there. If we augment Adam, he can stop this from happening again, protect the company in ways that we could only dream about before. Now, are you on board with this, or not?”

Outside of the NSN machine, if he had been an observer to this discussion, his throat would have gone dry, his stomach would have dropped. His hand went through Pritchard's shoulder, blue lines dancing and knitting back together. He still tried. “Say no.” His voice, through whatever modulation the NSN delivered, wavered. “Tell him no, tell him he shouldn't –”

“Fine, fine, I'll do it.” Pritchard's arms folded. “If you're so intent on rewarding failure, there's not much I can do about it. But you want to know what I'd do with a man who let half the research team _and_ Doctor Reed die?”

Sarif said nothing, tapped fingers on the desk in an impatient rhythm. Pritchard stood as well, glare concrete and resolute. “I'dfire him straight away. He obviously has some problems.”

Sarif's words, almost too soft to hear, almost _sad:_ “No more than you, Frank. Now, he's in the clinic. Get to work.”

The tick of clock stopped. The frown froze on Pritchard's face. Sarif's hand half-reached for the paper. Everything caught, preserved like dead things under an ice lake.

The lake shattered into those blue lines, colour drained away.

Another bright flash, and he was back in the NSN machine, back in the dirty doorway, the howls of monsters echoing around the buildings.

The brick dissolved in front of his eyes. Stone crumbled at his feet.

And Pritchard, behind him, who shrank back when he turned, when he spoke. “You could have stopped him...” The words hung, unreal. Someone else's words, spoken in another time and place, because they sure didn't feel like they came from his throat. “You could have said.... _something_...”

“Jensen, we don't have time for this, they'll find us if we stay here –”

“You knew what he did. And you – you said I _let_ them die –”

“Can we talk about this later –”

“I stood up for you!” His gold hands made fists by his side. “I told Sarif there was no way, _no way_ you'd betray us. If you were me, and I was lying there – you'd have just let him throw me out the door, wouldn't you? You wouldn't even have tried!”

Pritchard's glare was a mask betrayed by cracks. “You _know_ how he is –”

His short, furious laugh bounced off the narrow walls. “Good at keeping secrets. Him and Megan. You and him. What else are you both hiding from me? Huh?”

The anger felt good. Felt _right_. Stopped him from thinking, from dwelling on Megan. Shouldn't have trusted her, couldn't trust Sarif, or Pritchard. Was there anyone in this damn world he could rely on not to screw him over?

“Jensen.” Pritchard held trembling hands out, palms down, talking slow as though trying to coax someone down off a ledge. “We're almost at the exit of this room, all right? I know you'll really, really enjoy yelling at me, but let's just get out of here first.” Pritchard hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Please?”

Logical, but his anger didn't want to settle. He pushed out of the alcove and onto the empty street. Didn't matter if Pritchard followed or not. _A quirk of DNA,_ Sarif whispered in his head. Megan knew about that and never told him? Was she protecting him, or had she wanted to... research him? He'd never had to sit his bare ass on a steel table for her down in the labs, but if she had been doing it in secret...

The monster from the river had moved some way away. It curled its tentacles around a tower block, broke apart concrete and code. So, that was one monster accounted for. Where were the rest?

A huff behind him, and Pritchard hissed “This way!” into his ear. As much as he really didn't want to, he followed Pritchard between another building, stepping over the piles of loose rubble and debris. Ahead, through the gaps in the buildings, the wall of the room loomed, chiselled black and angular, triangles rippling over the surface. Nearly there. Nearly out and then... out. And out again, if he could, depending on what Sarif Industries quitting clause was like. No doubt if he chose to hand in his notice he could expect all those fancy augs to be prised out of his body, but maybe it'd be worth it. Prague was supposed to be nice this time of year.

The darkness of the streets crept around them. Twice, Pritchard paused for a moment, turned to consider the damage behind them, face drained of all emotion. He knew the look. A few minutes before he might have had some words of comfort, some small jibe to bring a smile or another scowl, but all he saw was Pritchard saying “He has some problems.”

_No more than you do, asshole._

“The door. Finally.” Pritchard pointed to a gap between the buildings, relief filtering through into a grin. When he didn't answer, the smile died. “You see it? Right there.”

A rectangle of blue set into glass, inviting. He grunted an answer.

Pritchard hurried ahead, ponytail bouncing along, while he hung back. His SWAT side hated the crowd of buildings, the narrow alleys that vanished into darkness. Not like the start of the city, tipping them straight out onto an open street.

The blue rectangle glowed at their approach, and when Pritchard pressed a hand against it it sank into the floor. “Hah.” Grey eyes went to him, not the exit, and that self-congratulatory grin returned. “Try not to hit my head when you carry me over the threshold.”

Any reply he gave might have morphed itself into a question about Megan, about Sarif, so he said nothing, stared as Pritchard huffed and passed through the exit of the city to where the stairs followed the wall up. _Don't go deeper than you need to,_ Sarif said. Yeah, well now he'd practically dug to the center of the world, excavated a whole closet-worth of skeletons.

A shadow down one of the alleys moved like slick oil. Clicked.

One brief glimpse of Pritchard's face, panic-widened eyes and slack mouth –

The virus pounced.

Tentacles whipped the air, aimed straight for him. His brain froze, undecided, just for a moment, then thawed enough for his feet to jerk him out of the way. Legs cracked the floor where he had been, spread the black ooze. Chunks of the floor melted, fell away. Round two.

Pritchard hovered at the edge of their ring, outside the door of the city. “Jensen!”

Another shadowy dash towards him, and he sidestepped, but one of those tentacles flicked out towards his face. His hands came up automatically, almost brushed it, and fear at what he had nearly done clawed its way up his throat. The glass wall pressed at his back. Cornered, cornered himself like a fucking animal. Pritchard over his shoulder, separated from him by that small barrier. He couldn't look behind, or away from the virus that had him pinned, but a small tremor vibrated against his palm, and his gold flashed purple.

_He let them die,_ said Pritchard in his head, but all he saw was the unpractised smile thrown his way, the easy friendship between Pritchard and the woman in the memory cluster.

Legs blocked his escape. A tentacle came up, swung –

And wrapped around Pritchard's wrist.

“ _Ah, Snake...”_ The words echoed through the cavern of the room like the voice of God. _“You must really like the little pooch.”_

Shadow stained the skin of Pritchard's arm. Clicks grew frantic, swallowed a sob and his own alarmed yell. The tentacle squeezed, yanked Pritchard forward towards a mouth that snapped and snarled.

“ _If something happens –”_

He tried to slam a lid down on the memory of Sarif, but it lingered in his head, replayed the words like a stuck record.

“ – _leave him. I won't lose both of you.”_

“ _Take the shot, Jensen!”_ Someone else, orders just as demanding, in his ear, when he had a gun in his hands, when he'd pointed it at a scrawny aug kid with wide eyes and gun pointed right back at them.

He hadn't followed orders then, and he sure as hell wouldn't now.

He passed behind Pritchard as the virus lunged forward, snatched at Pritchard's other, uninfected arm and yanked towards the door. The tentacle tightened, yanked right back. Purple smothered his hands, his arms. He pulled Pritchard over the threshold, and the virus followed, legs curling out of the sides of the door, tentacles winding across the floor. No time to be gentle, he hauled Pritchard even closer, avoided the inching black like the plague, and crushed back to chest. “Shut this damn door!”

Braving the curling legs, Pritchard's free hand slapped the blue symbol. A rumble, and the wedge of glass rose from the floor. Not fast enough. 

A shriek, a child deprived of their favourite toy, and the virus pulled again, drew Pritchard out of his grip to slam into the rising door. Tentacle still curled around wrist, stayed curled even when the door rose and rose, and crushed shut on Pritchard's arm.

Too immersive, this place. Horror crept up his throat in his actual body in the NSN machine. Not real, not real, but like a nightmare he couldn't stop.

The tentacle pulled the severed arm back, screamed as its trophy vanished into thin air like smoke.

Black ooze still clung to the stump of Pritchard's arm. No blood flowed, just a thin wisp of purple that mingled with the black, melted into the air.

The virus slammed against the door, bristles and tentacles and legs all stabbing, jabbing, clawing to reach them. Glass thinned like melting ice.

“Sorry,” he said, threw Pritchard's uninfected arm over his shoulder, careful to keep half an eye on the corruption, “don't have time to be gentle.”

Avatars seemed to weigh next to nothing, and dragging Pritchard up the steps felt easier than it should have been. The virus screamed below them, slammed a leg through the door and crushed the blue into scorched shards.

“ _I'm done fucking around with you two,”_ their Holy Lord Above said, and the static underlay flicked off. Good, more important things to do than listen to that guy whine.

They reached the platform, and when he tried to steer Pritchard towards the door the city caught his eye. The ruined tower blocks, the gaps, the river of black sludge that flowed though the middle. On the other side of the room, the river monster's tentacles surged into a block of houses, ripped them up as though they were made of paper. It paused to bellow, but, although loud, too far away to destroy his ears again. Pritchard's breath hitched, half a tired sob.

He tugged a little harder. “We gotta go.”

Pritchard's hand slapped the symbol, and when the door opened and he'd hauled them in the loading room, did the same again, shut off the virus's wail.

A jerk, and Pritchard shrugged off his supporting arm, rested the avatar's forehead against the wall. The silence ticked, and God dammit, if they didn't need to keep moving, and God dammit if he wasn't going to give Pritchard a moment.

From the stump, just above Pritchard's elbow, the ooze dripped down, hissed like acid as it hit the floor. It crawled up the jacket slowly, a snail's progress, but that didn't leave Pritchard with much time.

“All right.” Pritchard's voice muffled into the wall, but no panicking as far as he could tell. “Ruined my city. Okay, Phee, you _bastard_.”

“Hey, Pritchard. Want to maybe... keep moving to the next room?”

“You were right.” Pritchard peeled away from the wall, held up the stump and sighed. “As much as it pains me to admit it. He shouldn't have kept secrets from you. And I shouldn't have –” A stutter, a falter of ego, and Pritchard's face twitched. Grey eyes met his. “I never hated you, Jensen.”

Sounded way too much like a weird death-bed confession to him, but something in his stomach clenched anyway. “You know what, how about we talk about that once we get out? You can hate me all you want then. Promise.”

Not even a smile. He reached out his hand, persisted when Pritchard shrank back. “Jensen, I'm –”

“Not your friend's zombified toy just yet. I need you with me on this. Forget about it, for now.” Felt like trying to persuade a scared dog out into the open, but he held his hand there until Pritchard stepped forward and took it. Purple layered gold when he squeezed, like butterflies covering a field of yellow flowers. “We'll get out of here.”

An uncertain squeeze back, and if the avatars could blush, he'd bet good money that Pritchard's face would be tinged pink.

Darkness slicked higher, and when he took his hand away, it had covered up to the orange stripes of Pritchard's jacket. _Leave him there,_ Sarif whispered, _I won't lose both of you._

Without a word, Pritchard caught his hand again, but wouldn't look at him as they moved towards the end door.

He locked their fingers together as his leash frayed and his cage rusted.


	4. Source Decay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pritchard's infection grows, and Jensen fights fire with fire.

 

The ash tip of cigarette left a smear on the screen. He tapped it again until Shark glanced over. “Tell me that's an infection.” Cigarette back in his mouth, the slow coil of smoke dragged into his lungs. “Tell me our Snakey's not getting out of there.”

Fingers stroked the tip of Shark's chin, eyes darted over the flowing information. “That's an infection, sure. Want me to put you back over audio?” Hand hovered over the keyboard, ready for fingertips to connect, link to the keys. Tai Yong had been generous to them, enough to replace the Sarif Industries arm he'd torn out, and enough to give Shark new hands. When she heard his idea, boss-lady seemed more than happy to give them the green light. _Sarif's dog, yes, whatever you can do._

Assistants milled around, but so far they'd only made themselves useful for fetching coffee. His little group left no time for outsiders. They worked as they had way back when, Detroit's skyline out the window instead of Hengsha, though two down. Should have been five. All together.

When your flesh blackens and rots, cut it out.

Snake's betrayal strangled, hurt under the white-hot fury. His right-hand guy, the only person who held a damn candle to him. Not as good as him, and Snake's password bypassing had always been weak, but close. _He'd_ chosen the guy, messaged the nervous kid through the deep web, before Snake was Snake. Impressed with his work, how'd he like to come do some real hacking? A shitty ponytail, even back then, but Snake took the jokes on the chin, heard 'em a hundred times before. A kid from New Hampshire in the wilderness of Detroit – city suited some better than the country – a shitty daddy or a shitty grandpa, shitty entire family behind, depending on how much they'd been drinking.

And now working for Sarif, the guy who fucked them over, who bought the cops and showed them his front door. Couldn't have picked a more corrupt asshole to work for.

Had to cut Snake out.

“Nah, don't hook me up again. I'm done with that.” Tai Yong's NSN machine wasn't much more than a skeletal frame of chair, but it worked, especially for things like virus design. “Get me piggybacking Tantalus. I want to watch.” Shark's frown grabbed his temper by the throat. “Fucking _now._ When it's done, aug override, get Tantalus back in his head and end it. Or leave it to me if you don't have the balls.”

Spider blinked at him, one eye hidden behind colourless hair. Once it had been blonde. Prison sucked more than the life out of you. “If he won't, I will, Phee. For Sparrow.”

“Atta girl.”

Early afternoon, and outside their room the rest of TYM bustled past, behind the tinted one-way windows. Afternoon meant late for Detroit, but Snake preferred to work at night. Just a matter of spoofing the aug update when no one else would access it in Sarif Industries. _Make sure you leave him dead,_ she'd said, and he remembered the feral smile that sprang to his face. Smart guys like him always had a backup. And Sarif... the lure there was too strong. Guard dog came along at the right time; the created would destroy the creator. How fucking poetic.

A few taps of keys and Shark nodded. “You're clear, synced to Tantalus. When you're ready, Phee.”

He sat, the NSN humming through the chair and vibrating his ass. Shitty thing needed shock absorbers. The screen descended, and his hands clenched the arm rests as though around a throat. _Coming to get you, Snakey, coming to cut out the rot._

 

The loading hallway pressed around him, enclosed Frank in its bruised walls and shadows.

Code twisted, pulled by the corruption that spread through the avatar. It ate elbow, shoulder, tickled upwards like a cold drip of water defying gravity. Purple sparked, put up a brave fight, but lost the battle and swept under. No more jacket or skin texture on what was left of his arm – just a spreading wave of black, all the lights in a city failing. Maybe death felt like this, drowning, a fall, all the buttons switching off, all the lights fading out. A heart determined to hold onto those last few beats.

Disgust fought anger, mixed inside him into a poisonous brew. Enemies weren't a new deal –

Windmill, Svengali, even that surprisingly competent script kiddie V01D liked to find new ways to test him – but when you held the job of head of cyber security at Sarif Industries you always had to deal with a few black hats who liked to tug your tail, see where the weak links lay. He'd forgotten the danger of a real fight, one where life was a risk as much as data. Softened under Sarif's care. And look how it ended up.

Defeated, and by the one bastard he should've been on guard for.

The arm around his back kept him from reeling with every advance the virus made through his avatar. Even if he couldn't see them, the gold facets of Jensen's avatar buried themselves into his, at his shoulder, his hip. Felt like a handshake from an old friend, some familiarity that ran years-deep and bound two people together. The urge to pull away, escape from the intruding intimacy, came so strong that he was on the verge of twisting out of Jensen's grasp, maybe yelling something about personal space for good measure – but the flare of his own avatar's skin gave that thought a rain check when it settled over the gold.

“Don't we make a shiny pair,” Jensen said when they'd heaved themselves around halfway through the hall. The audio filter that gave that rough voice a slight buzz couldn't disguise the tinge of false cheerfulness. “Now I can say I know what it feels like to literally have a heart of gold. I see what you mean though, Francis. It does kinda suit me. So does yours, but I'm thinking bug wings.”

Whatever it took to keep his mind off the creep of black ooze. “ _Bug wings_. How flattering, Jensen.”

“Yeah, the ones with a shell.” A jostle against his shoulder. “You must've seen them – they're that kind of... iridescence that looks like rainbows when they catch the light properly, but they're purple all the same.”

He made his sigh nice and loud while his avatar's shards nuzzled back into Jensen's. Annoying things. “Wonderful. Maybe you can explain this to Sarif when we get out. 'Don't throw him back in prison, his avatar's too pretty!' That'll go down a _treat_.”

“No one's throwing you back in prison.” Jensen's arm tightened around his back, and for a second – a _second_ – he could believe that. But Jensen wasn't the boss of Sarif Industries.

“Sarif doesn't take failure well. My job was to protect company data against thieves. In that, I think we can both agree that I've failed spectacularly today.” Blue panels of light on the walls flickered in red-blue-green spectrum rainbows when they passed underneath, oddly beautiful in their decay. Black mould scudded the walls he'd crafted with such care. All of it dying, and all of it his fault. “Seven years, and Phee's torn through my defences like they were made of paper, gone right for the throat. Sarif... would be well within his rights to replace me.”

The arm jostled him in a little shake. “You didn't get to be head of cyber security by rolling over every time someone peered in the network's windows, Pritchard. What happened today doesn't erase those seven years you protected the company.”

“But –”

“We're still here. Still moving forward. It's not over 'til it's over, right?”

Jensen must have been the star boy at SWAT for talking down panicked bad guys, or playing the good cop in his little uniform.

Seven years to build a life not involved in crime – or at least, justifiable crimes, he'd lost any illusions that Phoenix's gang was some anti-establishment moral crusade – and a word from Sarif would tear all that down. No more cushy apartment, no more bringing his work home to spread out on couch and floor – or kitchen counter, according to a few pieces that had snuck there from his pocket to suffer his tinkering while he made breakfast. No more relaxing with the latest _Final Fantasy_ on those rare occasions when the day's work finished before midnight.

And no more Jensen.

His purple responded to gold with a sudden, exhausted surge.

'LOADING' suffered from preliminary infection just as much as the walls and lights. Instead of the letters hanging huge in mid air, 'L' and 'D' fell out of existence, left behind gaps like missing teeth. They limped towards the 'OA ING', and the numb stump of his left arm flaked like ash, torn code fluttering through the air and disappearing into nothing.

Gold shards left when Jensen propped him against the security room door to stalk back and forth under the letters, staring up at them as though wondering if the missing ones could be restored somehow. “It didn't take this long to load in before. Virus?”

His nod sent another drip of infected code to the floor. “Preliminary infection. Most of the defences are down, so it's spread ahead. This whole server is destabilising, Jensen.” Such a soft term for rotting and bleeding black at its cyber-seams.

“If we stayed in here –”

“We'd be the very definition of 'easy pickings.'” His arm stump smeared black on the wall. Where it touched it bit down like acid. “No walls. No doors. No rooms. Nowhere to run – we'd be floating in cyberspace, sitting ducks untethered to a server. To get us out of that, Sarif would have to program an exit – which he doesn't know how to do, by the way. No one at Sarif Industries does, except – ”

“You, yeah, I get it, you're usually the smartest guy in a room.” The hint of smile in Jensen's voice softened those words. Now that was flattering, but the slight smile left at Jensen's next words. “So, sitting ducks. And then he'll take my augs.” Jensen stretched a gold arm out, the hand curled into a fist. "What's his problem with Sarif anyway? He has issues with you, I can understand that. Hard not to. But Sarif? All he did was protect his company. You can't tell me this Phoenix guy seriously thinks he's in the right here."

"I don't think he took too kindly to Sarif's influence when they put him... put us away. It was a big job, but no one was expecting that amount of time, not even that idiot they called a lawyer. Even if Tai Yong came to scoop him up... Well. Phee was never one to let things go." OA ING continued to flicker its broken light. The entrance door showed no signs of the virus getting in. Not yet. "Once, we chased a Russian white hat all the way through dark servers. She was in the government, I think. Poking around. She got away from us."

"Good for her."

They'd milled like hounds after a lost scent, went back over and over, but their little white hat rabbit had hopped clear away. Yes, good for her. At the time, disappointment made them mute, slumped in their chairs, monitors glowing over each frowning face, but Phee had stood, kicked the chair to the other side of the room. Always black or white, always with a grudge, anger simmering just below the surface. Brilliant and terrifying. “He stayed for two days trying to get a bead on her again. I don't think I saw him eat. She was nothing special – he just didn't like losing. At the time I... I suppose it impressed me.” Jensen's faceplate tilted slightly in his direction, and he shifted his gaze back up to OA ING. “But let's face it, Jensen, Sarif Industries is several leagues ahead of Tai Yong. When he heard Sarif took me and not him, it must have twisted whatever knife Sarif stuck him with when we were caught.”

Gold shards rippled up over shoulders like the puffed fur of an angry cat, but what strained through Jensen's next words sounded more like grim glee. "Yeah, I bet losing out to one of his flunkies really pissed him off."

"Threatening Sarif in court probably didn't help, either.”

Gold flattened, the cat slinking back into a state of cautious disdain, and Jensen abandoned stalking the letters and moved towards him. “We're going to have a little chat when we're out of here.”

"Well... yes, I'd assumed we'd all sit down and have some sort of meeting –"

"I don't mean in Sarif Industries. I want to talk away from Sarif, away from where anything could get back to him." He should really give the default avatars eyes, so hard to know where Jensen stared – could be directly at his face or some point way over his shoulder. Facial expressions made up most of body language, so an absence of the entire face left him guessing. "When we're done, I want you to come back to my apartment."

“Your... apartment?”

"What I saw in that memory thing... I need to know..." The shards that made up the side of Jensen's face flurried in a strange little tic. Rarely did he feel sympathy, but it was all he could do to keep his hand at his side instead of soothing that anxious gold with his purple. Behind Jensen, OA ING pinged a dim green. "You wouldn't tell him, would you?"

He pushed away from the wall, stump detaching with a sensation like ripping paper. "Hiding things from the boss, secret meetings... you don't ask for much, do you, Jensen?"

"Let's just say a couple of things are starting to make sense." Jensen supported him, shards merging in a happy shimmer across their avatars, and hauled him towards the exit door. "And after what I saw, can you blame me? Sarif... never told me. Didn't even try. If he'd just fixed up my head, my chest, instead of replacing parts of me with his toys, maybe I'd still feel like myself. Maybe I'd still feel human."

"You are human." The confession sent an uneasy coil spiralling in his stomach. Was that a symptom of augmentation psychosis? “Even if you prefer not to act like it at times.”

Jensen's snort whispered through the audio processor as a rush of static. "Then why do I feel like he only had one thing in mind when he hacked off my arms and legs? Why do I feel like he saw me more as his weapon?"

He couldn't pretend to know Sarif's reasoning. What he'd seen glinting behind those eyes when they sat across from each other, discussing Jensen's augmentations, he hadn't liked at at the time, and remembering it now brought back a metaphysical chill in his metaphysical chest. A weapon, a test subject – legality and permissions slipped into an employee contract. Seven years of working for Sarif, and he hadn't even scratched the surface of motivation.

His hand hit the door panel at the exact moment the infection in his avatar advanced. Purple drowned up to his shoulder and across his back. More lights shut off. He would have preferred pain to the numb absence. “Jensen, let me go, _now._ ”

“What?”

Panic built, as furious and sudden as a hurricane. He yanked himself out of Jensen's grip, stumbled through the open door and dropped to one knee. Shards slowed the advance of black across his chest to a crawl. Okay, calm down... A brief loss of avatar integrity. It happened.

“Shit – shit, you okay?” The level of concern in Jensen's voice had never been directed at him before – unless it was across the meeting table, with words to the effect of _“I think you need to see someone about that paranoia, Francis,”_ – and his throat gave a phantom clench.

“Fine... I'm fine. Just... I think it's best if you don't touch me again, Jensen. This virus is faster than I thought.” Faster, more aggressive, a sickness that nipped away, piece by piece. All the data he contained, shrinking into itself. One good complete infection and everything would be up for grabs. A good head of security had backups of everything – but when your backup was threatened, what then?

Jensen's inhale of surprise came as a rasp through the avatar's audio processor, and snapped in half when the door clinked shut under his hand.

The metal-textured platform, wide as a highway, stretched out into the void, flimsy against the yawning emptiness. The edge of space, no end to the room. But wrong, it should have been orange, glowing with the light of the lava wall and the shine of defence nodes –

No lavawall. Defence node shells hung in the wide arc of platform ahead, hovering in mid air. Tiny suns with all the light sucked out, cracked open and leaking black smoke.

“I feel like I'm gonna get sucked over the edge.” Jensen peered down into the gloom beneath with a curious tilt of gold. “Good thing I'm not scared of heights. I'm guessing your crack security system isn't supposed to look like it's got cancer, either.

"They've eroded the security system. The nodes... maybe I can fix them, bring up the lavawall again, if I hurry. If there's time."

A lot of big ifs there. What choice did he have?

Gold shards reached for him, longing. Jensen's head turned towards the glow of purple light, then to him. "The exit's right there. Forget about the machine, Sarif can -"

"You don't get it!" Fear snapped as anger in his voice. "It crossed over – from my aug to the NSN. Same virus. In here I have a chance - I can use the system's defences." He stood, ignored the numb, empty weight of the avatar's arm stump. "Out there, all my defences would fall, the avatar would no longer be loaded - and there'll be nothing left to stop the virus from hopping back into my aug and taking the information he wants. Nothing to stop him from killing me."

Jensen turned, shock a glimmer of shards that radiated from chest to palms. "What? What are you talking about? We're in cyberspace, I thought he couldn't get you in here."

Weary, he stood, limped towards the console path. Overhead, the empty nodes buckled as though miles under the ocean. "As he's demonstrated, _ably_ , taking control of augmentations is something he's good at. He already made me hallucinate you as some kind of... _hideous_ zombie robot. It wouldn't be hard for him to overload the neural aug directly into my brain. The only surprise is that he hasn't done it already. Maybe he wanted me to infect you, but that won't happen." His smile tasted bitter. "You brought us this far, and no doubt Sarif will give you a medal when you get out, but the exit is right there. I suggest you leave the rest to me, Jensen."

Faceplate turned towards the exit, then back to him, like a dog trying to make sense of some particularly difficult command. "No."

Couldn't make this easy. Impossible man. "Yes."

"I'm not going anywhere, not while that thing is still after -"

"You can't attack this!" Feet dragged, blocks of wood. Infection spreading down, eating every bit of his avatar it could reach. When Jensen came up beside him, he stumbled away like a drunk. "This isn't something you can punch or shoot or intimidate until it goes your way, Jensen, you'll put Sarif at risk if you stay in here. Go. I'm more than capable of doing this without a babysitter."

Jensen hovered at his shoulder, a familiar action that always annoyed him back in meatspace. _What are you doing, Francis, what are you typing up, can I have that energy bar?_ If Jensen's avatar had been a simulated skin like his there would be a tightened jaw, a glare that only the most stubborn could pull off. “I'll talk to Sarif when I get out, there has to be a way.”

“No.” His hands hit the console, and his fingers immediately moved over the keys. A small screen set into a metal casing lit up with code, glowed a tired blue-grey. “One other thing you can do. The Snake virus, on my desk. Plug it into the NSN.”

“The Snake –?”

“On my desk. Plug it in, there should be a free port.” The smallest security node sparked orange, flared. A little more defence. “That's the most useful thing you can do right now, Jensen. Go get it done.” When Jensen didn't move, he sighed, and the code paused on the screen. “Please?”

Never thought he'd be saying 'please' to Jensen twice in one day, but it seemed to hit home. A nod, tight and defiant, but there, and Jensen drifted towards the rectangle of light that formed the exit. Maybe a relative twenty meters away, but the furthest they'd been apart since this started, and it felt like they'd been in here forever. Should he say something? If he died in here, external body switched off and consciousness a waning and drooling mess, captured in cyberspace like an unfortunate insect in a child's glass jar, it would be his last chance.

He half turned from the console, peered over his shoulder to watch Jensen examine the exit. Gold shards flicked over back and over shoulders in curiosity. The purple flared out to meet them, not quite touching. An artist couldn't do justice to the image, even if this was cyberspace. But not the time to admire or marvel at the way the glow reflected off gold, or the curious stretch of hand that dipped into the light. “Jensen?”

No courtesy tilt of acknowledgement in his direction, Jensen turned to face him fully as though wanting to be called back. He bit the inside of the avatar's lip between two teeth – a vice that hadn't reared its head since his early twenties – and turned back to the console. “You're dawdling.”

Gold crinkled where Jensen's eyes should have been. A cheery wave of middle finger in his direction, and the exit flared. Blue flames flicked at the edges, tugged at Jensen and swathed the avatar in mist.

The door behind him caved like the hull of a rusted ship.

Black smoke swept into the room, sank into the ground and ran with hungry fingers up the wall.

The virus coiled in the middle of the doorway, bigger now, tendrils as thick as tree branches. A heaving, hungry, screeching mess of oil and decay. Its tentacles slipped inside the room first, tasting and testing like the feelers of a wary insect.

What he wouldn't give to send the lavawall tumbling down now, scorch off those tentacles and give it something to really scream about.

It took every effort to pull focus back to the console. Bypassing re-routed protocols wasn't easy with one hand. Alternative passwords threw up glaring red errors. Node status blocked him with illogical messages – _No data available,_ ridiculous, they were right there – but after a few moments, a lifetime considering the circumstances, it allowed him a way in, a small hope.

_"Pritchard!"_

He couldn't pause at Jensen's cry, but his head half-turned before he remembered. Out of the corner of his eye, the exit's blue flare softened to white, the beginning of the NSN exit sequence, catapulting Jensen back into his body. Safe, Jensen was safe.

And he was alone.

Something spilled under the chair, a black tide oozing its way against the console. His feet disappeared in the darkness, and the infection crawled, eager, up his legs. Fingers trembled against the keys of the console, tapped and tapped and tapped until everything blurred together. The smallest node flared white, lit the area. All he could do. All he could do, and it wasn't enough.

A wet and heavy _smack_ behind him. Shuffling. The virus stalked him, had him cornered, and he'd run out of aces up his sleeves. The vision in his left eye drained, colours washing out of themselves and darkness taking their place. Cryptic nonsense dashed across the screen of the console. All the lights, switching off, one by one.

But Jensen was safe. Sarif was safe.

His remaining hand curled into a fist, dropped from the console. Behind, the ghastly sound of meat splitting open, tearing with a wet smack, rose over the background hum. What was next on the list of terrors for him today? At least he'd had plenty of fun here, running around the city with Shadowchild. Who would tell her? She wouldn't know, not for days -

The sound behind rose into a frenzy, something tearing its way out, being birthed in gore. He wouldn't turn. Enough of seeing things he really didn't want to see. If it was going to grab him, let it do it, while he sat and stared at the light of the node that glowed defiantly and beautiful in the void beyond.

Silence, so sudden it could have been the infection blocking his ears. What was it waiting for?

A tap, heavy and purposeful, growing closer. Not the sounds of a virus. More like the sound of... footsteps...

Deep red shards of a default avatar rested on his shoulder, fingers digging into his purple as though trying to crush them. An audio processor purred to life, grating. “Snakey, Snakey. Miss me?”

 

“Pritchard!”

The word echoed across an impossible space. White light surrounded him, peeled away his avatar and left him as nothing. The last glimpse of the NSN server faded, black against blue and purple. Couldn't struggle without a body, but he sure could try and turn himself around somehow, get back to Pritchard, throw them both through the exit, together, find whatever other way there had to be to fight the virus, even if it meant wrecking Sarif's precious NSN.

And then what? Watch Pritchard die when that asshole pushed the biochip's self-destruct button? How fast would they have to be to get it out or shut it off?

His hands clenched into the chair. Great, so those were back. Next came his legs, then his feet resting on the floor. When he opened his eyes, his optical aug booted up as though he'd been asleep. The HUD blinked on, displayed his weapons and other augs.

How long had he been in there?

As he leaned forward with a groan, a hand gripped his shoulder. “Adam? Son, can you hear me? What happened?”

“It wasn't Pritchard, it wasn't his fault.” He jerked away from Sarif's grasp, lurched out of the NSN. Reality was softer than cyber space, a lot more curves and skin, but it didn't feel any safer. He staggered, and when Sarif's hand came up to steady him he brushed it away. Pritchard sat slumped against the side of the chair, eyes closed. No sign of the struggle happening inside the machine.

Pritchard, just as much under Sarif's thumb as he was. The same.

Sarif's eyes ticked between them, burning with questions. No time to explain. Another man in the room, familiar, suited up as though at a board meeting, crouched beside Pritchard. Augmented eyes turned to him when he growled, curious, not afraid. Hair prickled up the back of his neck. Those serpentine eyes. And speaking of snakes – “Don't touch him, all right? Just don't – I'll be back – wait with him –”

The door slipped open at his frantic approach, and he scrambled against the frame, the world shifting under his feet like he'd had one too many. No doubt blame lay with the NSN. Once he'd found his balance again, gotten used to being in a real meat body again, he slid out onto the corridor. Sarif called his name with the tone of a man demanding their dog stop chasing squirrels and get back there _right now_ – but the prize hound had slipped his leash.

At the end of the corridor he stopped. Elevator or stairs, which was faster?

A long way down. Elevator then, even if standing still would kill him.

It took a year to arrive, and another year before the door closed under his jabbing finger. The descent started with a smooth whirr. Damn thing, why was it taking so long? Should've taken the stairs, should have taken the _fucking_ stairs. His reflection in the glass stared back. Augments stamped into his forehead, at the sides of his eyes. Ugly. _Wrong._

Detroit's indigo sky shifted to an early-morning grey. The stars overhead had started their slow fade into obscurity. At this time of morning, the dark lumps of buildings all looked the same, like the buildings in Pritchard's city. His hands clasped the metal bar that wound around half of the elevator, where Pritchard had stood on the morning of the attacks on the lab, all sarcasm and biting insults that he'd give anything to hear again.

He rested his head against the glass and tasted the sting of blood when his teeth found his lip.

If we get out I'll take you around town, wherever you want. We can hit the bars, we can walk by the river. We can sit on rooftops and you can tell me about Sarif and I'll tell you about him too.

Megan's memory was a raw wound in his head, one that bled if he picked at it too much. Too soon, wasn't that what everyone would say?

The elevator slowed, then stopped. When the doors opened he started towards Pritchard's office without hesitation. All the scientists had either wandered back to the labs or gone home, but the security guards still roamed up and down, concentrated near Pritchard's office. Different faces indicated a shift change, and when they greeted him it was with an air of curiosity. No doubt they'd gotten all the gossip from the previous shift. Hopefully they wouldn't take it too personally when he ignored them and blew into Pritchard's office like a small whirlwind.

Pritchard's intern jumped off the couch when he entered, an excuse stuttering to her lips, but like the guards he had no time for her.Pritchard's desk had his attention now. He ran his hands over the doodled post-it notes that had shuffled around. Too many files lay open and covered the desk in scatters of paper. The guards had been digging – whether by Sarif's orders or their own volition it didn't matter, but the snake virus could be hiding between any of the pages. His hands shifted over the files, searched for a bump. He didn't even know what the damn thing looked like – probably close to one of the other virus drives, right?

A file fell, papers burying his feet. Then another. Who cared about being neat and tidy at a time like this?

He almost missed the cartridge, would have tossed it to the floor with the others if the penned curve hadn't caught his eye.

The snake, though with less detail than the little doodles, was still recognisable. No writing, just the image of a crude snake, forked tongue flicked out and a stabbed dot for an eye. Almost looked like an old video game some kid had drawn on, but if Pritchard created it, it probably held some surprises.

He left the intern gaping at him, her cheeks red and hair more than slightly frizzy, and slipped back out of the door towards the elevator. This time, a couple of guards jogged to keep pace, and when he hammered on the button to open the door, they clustered in behind him. He kept his arms tight by his sides, even as his HUD alerted him to his own raised heart rate. They all crowded into the elevator, and he jostled to push the button for the top floor. Claustrophobic, despite all the room. His hand clenched around the snake virus – carefully. No need to crack one of Pritchard's programs, he'd never hear the end of it. “Along for the ride, huh?”

Espinosa wouldn't meet his gaze, and her eyes instead went to the disappearing ground of Detroit. “Orders from above. Sir.”

“Yeah, sure. Does Sarif want bodyguards or babysitters?”

Her unhappy shrug came with a cringe of shoulders, almost as though expecting a reprimand or a blow. “I... I'm not sure, Sir. Jensen. He just said to –”

Next to her, the other guard, a newer recruit with a name he didn't remember – Something Conradt? – swiped a hands over a pale face, dark eyes flicking between them, and coughed. Espinosa's eyes narrowed, but she shook her head like an old horse trying to get rid of an irritating fly. “He said to come with you back upstairs. I don't know why.”

He nodded. Babysitters or bodyguards – his money more on bodyguards. Did Sarif know, have some inking that he'd seen a little more than just Pritchard's video game?

The sky faded even further into dawn, and the roads already streamed with the car lights of early commuters. The lights lapped, red and yellow blurred into one, like his gold avatar slipping into Pritchard's purple and layering like feathers. Now that the NSN machine wasn't a barrier to his actual body, some warm and pleasant feeling tightened slowly in his stomach. Was the NSN... supposed to have that kind of effect?

The elevator opened and he left the guards to catch him up.

The NSN room looked just as he'd left it – Pritchard still hooked up to the machine, hair falling in strands – but Sarif and the other guy – Kerry, that was it, right? – stopped talking when he came in, and by the time he'd moved to the NSN console, they'd arranged their faces into something like concern.

The NSN console hid behind the chair. A hot metal block with one clear side showing layers and layers of intricate wiring and boards. His fingertips prised the perspex free. Where did the Snake fit?

“Adam, son, if Frank didn't come out with you...” Sarif lingered slightly behind, an annoying wasp wheedling away his last nerve. He knew how it went – _Adam, do this, Adam, go here. Adam, you can trust me, I gave you weapons, made you stronger, you owe me –_ all the manipulative shit his brain passed over. Because he did owe something, didn't he?

Espinosa and Conradt – or maybe it was Collins – thumped into the room behind him, but he didn't look back at Sarif to see if any orders were being given in his stead, instead ran his thumb across the Snake's port. Like trying to fit the triangle shape in the triangle hole of a kid's toy – easy in theory, but instead of four possible shapes there was a dozen, all similar. First one didn't fit right, too small. Second one looked right, but he met with resistance when he tried to slot it in. _Hurry, hurry._

“Look, son.” Sarif's hand weighed on his shoulder. He shook it off with a twitch, a hint for anyone to back down. Sarif took it as a challenge. “Adam, come on, what are you doing? Do you even know? And what the hell is that thing anyway? You can't just go shoving some piece of tech into this machine, it's delicate company equipment, Adam!”

Third time wasn't the charm. Anger flared in his jaw, and his lips curled themselves over his teeth in a snarl. “Pritchard's virus. And don't touch me.”

He could only take a moment to relish Sarif's shocked silence before the Snake slid home. Nothing for all of three seconds, and then nuclear green stripes of light shone around the cartridge, blinking in reassurance. “This better help.”

When he closed the cover and stepped back, Kerry caught his eye. Combine the creep smile with those narrow slit pupils and white irises, and the effect was all cold-blooded lizard. Before Kerry could start in with more bullshit, he got there first, words biting and hot, all of his asshole side. “R&D, right? Worked a little bit on my aug surgery? Didn't realise I was in the middle of a business meeting. If I'd known I would've packed a snazzy suit of my own.”

His rudeness only cranked Kerry's smile up a patronising notch, as though instead of him being a dick, he was a toddler throwing an amusing tantrum. Long fingers twitched over the sleeves of Kerry's suit, although there was no dust or lint there that he could see. Guy didn't seem like the kind to get his hands dirty – unless it involved shoving augmentations into someone's head.

“Jensen, good to see you're adapting to your augs. That's a virus, you say? A tad dangerous to just go around sticking it wherever you like. Viruses are destructive, and that's quite an expensive piece of kit, as I'm sure David's already told you.” Kerry shrugged with one shoulder, but those slit pupils widened into a diamond. “But if you think it will help, then your task is complete. You're no longer needed, and can return to your duties. I'll take it from here, I daresay you have an interesting report to write.”

Sarif's gaze switched between him and Kerry, jaw working and eyebrows knitted together. The guards clustered behind, nerves shifting them from one foot to the next. He'd have to train that out of them, _if_ he still held a job here after tonight.

He hunched his shoulders, one foot slightly behind to gain leverage should he need to dash forward. If it came to that. “I'm not going _anywhere_ , not until he's out of that damn machine. It wasn't his fault,” he faced Sarif and tried to unbunch his hands from their fists, even his voice into something a little less like a snarl, “it was one of his old pals. Fucking Tai Yong trying to screw with us. Pritchard's in there right now trying to save _your_ damn data. He's already saved your life. If you think I'm leaving him now, you're out of your mind. His old friend wants to pop his biochip, if he can't deal with that virus in there –”

“Listen, Adam,” Sarif's voice grated, but he held fast, “whatever you did in there, whatever the hell happened is _over_ , you can't help him now.” A hand came up, like Sarif wanted to pat his arm, and then dropped. The other went to a weathered forehead instead, rubbed with an ' _I have a headache and you're the cause'_ motion. “What you can do is go back to your office, get down what happened, and then go home. Take the day off, get some rest. I'll call you as soon as I know what's going on. We'll monitor his aug, keep an eye out for any signs of an overload. We clear?”

Pritchard's head lolled to the side. Slivers of grey peeked from under lids.

Purple blending with gold. Something beautiful, something worth saving.

A hot and fierce vice clamped down on his chest. “No, we're not _clear_. You put Pritchard in charge to take care of the data here. You put me in charge to take care of people like him. Far as I can see, right now, we're both performing our required duties.”

“You're not _listening_ to me, Adam!” Temper turned Sarif's face an ugly shade of red, high on cheeks. “I know you have issues with taking orders, but I'm not letting you walk over me on this. I'm not joking here, I want you out!”

Espinosa's apologetic turn of mouth didn't detract from her hand reaching down to touch the stun gun at her waist. The newer guard materialised one, faster than Espinosa, and any other time he'd be impressed. He could fight them, and he'd win, but then he'd be right back on the street looking for a new job. Hell, maybe he'd got that far already.

What was one step further?

“You think I trust you around unconscious people now, _boss?_ ” His sneer must have made him look like a snarling animal, because the temper drained from Sarif's face, kept fading to a grey tinge.

Kerry yowled, a satisfying sound of surprise, when he shouldered past. The chair felt like an old friend now, and when he sat his ass down the screen that slid in front of his eyes spelled out: 'WELCOME BACK: USER – ADAM JENSEN.'

“Adam! Don't even think about it!” Sarif grabbed his arm, started to say more, but words vanished, replaced with a familiar hum that stole all other sounds. The last thing he saw before the light of the NSN sucked his consciousness into cyberspace was white irises and black slit pupils, a smile.

 

His feet touched something solid, but Christ, had he gone blind? Had the NSN fucked with whatever passed for eyes in this place? Black walls, black floor, indistinguishable from each other, but one gold hand told the difference. Not blind. Pritchard's lobby, still there, but decayed beyond imagination. The console rotted into the floor, a lump now, melted not-metal and not-plastic. Screens hung by frayed wires like the sad heads of hanged man.

The silence, the absence, weighted the room.

“Pritchard?” Could he be heard this far away? Did distance even matter in cyberspace?

A rustle from one of the walls, black on black. If he had to deal with another virus, he might scream, but since the door had become a giant hole, maybe he had a straight shot at running. No Pritchard here to conjure a fake-Pritchard out of thin air and send it marching to its death in the jaws of a virus.

The walls glimmered, shifted like bands wrapped around the room. A cautious step near, and a pattern emerged, sideways diamond lines, faint, a dirty violet against shadows. His fingertip traced one, followed the pattern, and as it did the trail shone gold, like he'd rubbed some of his avatar's colour on the wall with his finger. It didn't stop where his finger stopped, but carried on, filled every line until the room glowed with fragments. Beautiful, in a... terrifying sort of way.

He'd started towards the door when a low hiss sliced the air, the sound of vents, steam.

Black bled to a deep purple, the colour so rich it nearly dripped off the wall. Another hiss, louder, and the purple brightened to the shade of Pritchard's avatar, gained a glow that fought with gold opalescence, a base that reflected back an entirely different colour.

With the third hiss, the things that weren't walls shifted again, against each other with the sound of sandpaper gliding over rough wood. If he had hairs on the back of his avatar's neck, they would have been prickling. Not walls, or bands, or diamonds. Scales.

Snake loaded in with a flare, set the room alight with velvet fire.

In an avatar, he shouldn't have been breathing so hard, the gold of his chest rose and fell anyway. Never been scared of snakes, but when one with a body as thick as a subway train curled around you, forget any previous bragging. A virus, so much more elegant than Phee's goopy mess. Could it infect him too? His hand seemed intact, no weird infection crawling steadily along his arm. Thank God for that... Was it friendly?

He turned, and an eye glared back, huge and mindless and red.

Freezing was an animal response to danger, one that as ex-SWAT he really shouldn't still have, but they didn't exactly teach excessively-huge-snake control back then. With no pupil, the eye didn't seem... real. Light shone behind, a red glow inside a red orb. He still didn't move. The other virus he could at least put some distance between, but this thing had him trapped in a circle of scales and hissing. It could have swallowed him whole with plenty of room for kicking and flailing on the way down its gullet.

A translucent sheet of membrane slipped over the eye in something like a giant wink. When it rolled back, red bloomed to a neon green.

He held in a non-breath. The wedge of head tilted, scales rippling and flexing as though tiny individual creatures banded together to make up one big organism. That rasp again, and the head drew back, Snake uncoiling from around him and winding its way through the room. It found the hole in the wall and slipped through, its back scraping the corroded code in a shower of purple sparks. Damn thing was a lot faster than he thought – in a few seconds its tail vanished with a flick.

Well... nowhere else to go. Might as well follow his new serpent guide.

He edged around some of the particularly nasty-looking dark patches on the ground, and passed through what used to be the door. No more LOADING hanging in the air. With the virus breaking up the code the machine, maybe the NSN didn't need to load the rooms in any more.

Snake stopped in the middle of the next room. Green warmed to orange, and it tilted its head from side to side, scales tinting old gold and then violet from one moment to the next. He'd seen the expression before, though a lot more expressive and canine, in Kubrick's body language. Its tail draped in his path, so he stepped over the tip and walked alongside the thick ridge of its body. Elegant indeed. If he raised a hand he could have touched it, but some things you shouldn't get attached to. Especially not giant viruses. “What do you smell, boy?”

Kubrick would have perked up ears at his words, grinned a dog smile – tongue lolling out as though in a laugh – but snake didn't so much as favour him with a blink, although its tongue did show, for a brief moment, a pronged yellow light that reflected off its scales.

Down the hall, hidden in the lingering shadows, something chuckled with a sound like water glugging out of a bottle.

The orange sheen of eye switched back to red. Snake slid forward, but slowly. Hunting. He waited for it to move ahead and followed at a safe distance. The cliffs of floor now jutted, some broken off and crumbled. Others towered, rivalled the city's skyscrapers for height. Their path took them between, down the middle.

It came towards them, laughter a mad whoop that rose to a scream. Its claws dripped black, and the eyes that stared with blank fixation on them were a misted white. Tendrils writhed like worms from its arms.

One of Pritchard's _Killer Run_ enemies, transformed by the virus, come to welcome him back.

Another scream, high and wavering, one of pain. Did Pritchard program them to sound like that if they were defeated in the game, or had the virus fucked around with audio or something? Either way, it pushed images back to the front of his mind – a riot, people screaming, first in anger, then fear, and finally in pain. Not him, he'd tried to help –

It leapt for him, hands outstretched and grabbing, ready to infect him too –

Snake struck with the speed of a bullet. It snapped, and time slowed as his adrenaline kicked in, gave him a nice view of long curved fangs. One pierced the creature in mid-jump. Jaws snapped together. He shied away from the black ooze that rained down. Any of that crap got on him – game over. Snake tightened its hold, and black cracked, smoke pouring out and hovering in the air. The cracks widened, and just when he thought the thing was about to explode, gold shone, like the sun through storm clouds. Black flaked away into a gold shell. One last snap, and the gold dissipated. Not smoke, but steam this time.

Satisfied, Snake softened back to green and glided on.

He stepped over the spot where the creature had leaped. Not a trace of gold, or decay. All the effort and work Pritchard put into creating it, and nothing to show, not even a body. Why did it make him uneasy?

Another loading room demolished, and through the next door/hole the city waited for him, complete with lots more creatures. The Snake paid no attention when he jogged up to behind its head. Good for him, because if it changed its mind and whipped round it could be on him faster than a dog on a rat.

“Not far now.” Sure, stupid talking to a big virus-snake, but hell, no one else could hear him. No Pritchard to bicker with, so might as well take what company he could get. “Gonna have our work cut out for us in the city though. If I don't make it through, you'd better get to him.”

No answer, but he hadn't expected one. Snake edged towards the next hole, tongue flicking along the edges as though tasting the city beyond. Was that its physical representation of scanning? The NSN didn't make a whole lot of sense, but maybe that was it. At least it kept things simple – green for good, red for bad, amber for scanning along with the tongue. If someone spent a long time here, they'd probably see more patterns, but even after dodging Sarif the less time he spent in here the better. This time, he'd come out with Pritchard, no matter what happened.

Scales that made up the ridge of back lifted a little when the Snake paused, like hackles rising on a dog. What would the Nuke and Stop! viruses look like if he could load them in here? A giant nuclear explosion and a big red stop sign?

Snake moved forward, eyes back to amber.

It seemed like five minutes ago that he stepped through the same doorway with Pritchard. The city had impressed him then, and now it took his breath away for a different reason. Nuke virus or no Nuke virus, the city was flattened. Skyscrapers now the level of houses, their ruined brick skeletons littering roads and crushing other buildings. A hole – no, two holes – opened the street, one edging into the river and sucking the water down with not a single spray. The virus-infected octopus-monster still flailed its tentacles in the air, its babyish screeching bouncing off the high walls and reaching him as a thin wail, but all the buildings around it were stumps, piles of rubble. Nothing left for it to reach. It couldn't even heave its bulk up to try and gouge the opposite wall of the next room. Good job too, because if that thing tried to slither through into the next room, Pritchard would have another problem.

The stairs took him down to the street, to where Pritchard had looked through the glass at the city beyond, where he'd got curious about the memory cluster on the floor. Now the glass littered the floor in shiny fragments, and the triangle of memory cluster lay grey like cold ash, no hint of glow. No more of Pritchard's friend, teasing with the casual intimacy that only years of friendship could bring.

Snake didn't need to use the stairs. It arched off the platform in an elegant ribbon and slipped down to street level.

Dark alleys, or those ones that weren't filled with rubble and concrete, writhed with figures in the shadows. Some already stumbled in the street, their wings or extra limbs flopping drunkenly to drip more infection onto the floor. What he wouldn't give for the vendor to be back here, whole and uninfected, an array of weapons for sale. No money, but maybe if he asked real nice he'd get the shotgun – impossible incendiary rounds and all.

His slithering bodyguard lashed out when the dark infected things came too close, but it didn't stop moving forward. Fine by him, anything to get him to Pritchard faster. Not even the carcass of an apartment block fazed the Snake – it glided over with ease, left him to scale the grey cliff. Maybe avatars had an easier time with cyberspace gravity, or maybe his mentality sat in the right place, but his feet and hands found the right holes, and when he heaved himself over the top, the Snake waited for him on the other side, eyes amber.

What a good virus.

Smashed into the road, the apartment block sloped down on the next side. He braced, and then, with a giddy swoop in his stomach, skidded down the fragments of code and jumped when he hit the street. The Snake started to move once more, scanning with eyes and tongue. How come it waited for him? Was it a proximity thing?

Dead grass still patched the earth in the park, an ugly, sparse sea of withered brown, but the trees and hedges scattered twigs and branches everywhere – decimated, probably by a big tantrumed swing of one of octo-virus's tentacles. The memory cluster still glowed, but dimmer than before, like whatever kept it fuelled was giving up the ghost. Snake breezed past him, but the purple of the memory cluster pulsed in a heart beat-flutter, and his feet found their way over the grass to where it lay.

Purple. Part of Pritchard.

The temptation to slide his hand into the light pulled back at the sound of voices within the triangle, and his startle felt oddly like guilt. Snake would still be passing through the park for a good few seconds, and nothing sinister had staggered its way in to attack him.

He leaned forward. The light felt familiar when it touched his face, friendly. Pritchard's voice within, faint murmurs and the clattering of keyboard. He peered deeper, and it was as though he stared into a lake, and at the bottom, through clear water, Pritchard sat in the tech lab, hands running across the keyboard and staring at the screen. Someone with short, dark hair approached, sat a coffee mug down next to Pritchard. It took him a moment to place them – Malik looked a lot different from so high above. She lingered by Pritchard's desk, their words muffled. Whatever they talked about must have been fairly important to be in a memory cluster. However, his curiosity would only take him so far, and before he pulled out his last glance was of Pritchard, voice a muted grumble as Malik flipped her hand in a dismissal, and walked out of the office.

Pritchard would be like that again when they got out of this damn machine, fit to mutter and glare, healthy and not infected. He'd make sure of it.

The Snake's tail passed, so he took that as a cue to get back moving again. The river couldn't be far away, right? Cross that and they were on the home stretch for the exit.

As long as the infected giant octopus didn't give them any trouble.

Another snap of Snake's head, and another corrupted AI flared from existence. How many of them hung around inside the game? An entire army? From what had chased them across the bridge, that idea didn't seem so far-fetched. At least he could still run, even if he had no weapons in here.

The wails grew louder, and under them the rush of river as it flowed and divided the city. The hole he spotted from the balcony yawned in the middle of the road, bigger than it had seemed from up there. Was the damn thing growing? A few chunks of code from the road trembled and spilled into the hole. A little more of the river rushed in, formed a waterfall that tumbled into nothing. Well, there was the answer.

The bridge, just ahead. He patted the Snake's side. “This way.”

Whether it heard him or was just following some programmed targeting he didn't know, but it curved around him and headed in the direction he faced. Never thought about a snake as a pet before – not enough fur, not affectionate enough, couldn't chase sticks worth a damn – but alone, you took what companionship you could.

“Just a little further. The exit's across the river, but we got that big bastard in the way. Hope you can deal with him, because I sure as hell don't have the firepower here.” Its green dome of eye passed over him as he trotted beside its head. “You'd better save him, though. You better do that much.”

 _He didn't save you, though, not before._ The whisper in his head was a cruel voice, a logical voice. _He told Sarif to fire you, blamed you for what happened in the labs. You weren't worth the time of day for him. Just one more thing to bitch and whine over. Just one of Sarif's passing obsessions._

Maybe that was true before. Pritchard definitely hadn't given him the warmest welcome at Sarif Industries. A cocked eyebrow and a sniffy little “Is he all?” were his fruit basket and welcome gifts. Sure, the snide remarks and sarcastic responses pissed him off, but after a while... hadn't they felt more like a game?

He grabbed my hand, like a scared little kid.

A little further down the road, Snake stopped, tongue a flame of flickering light. It took a moment to realise why.

Half the bridge had collapsed into the black river, washed away or a victim of tentacle-force trauma he couldn't even tell. Shit. Behind, something groaned down one of the alleys. He pressed closer to Snake, so close its purple reflected off his gold. “So what do we do now? I'm not about to take a dip, not in that water.”

Its head tilted from side to side, a cobra under the sway of a snake charmer. When it stopped, it passed through onto the bridge, tongue flicking, sensing the gap ahead. It edged out by degrees, and when he thought it would dip and fall in, its head crested to the other side, body a long cable stretching the break.

Well, damn. Looked like there was a bridge after all.

Scales slipped under his hands, glass when he tried to haul himself up and on. For a moment he remembered the sweet smell of horse and the jangle of bit. An ancient memory of a vacation. Christ, how old had he been, twelve? The damn beast hadn't stopped shifting, and every time he moved on its back its ears went flat. Pissed off. Nah, give him dogs as pets any day.

He tried again, scrambling up, this time snagging his arms over the top of the Snake, and clung there as it took him on the world's worst subway ride. A jolt up and his arms nearly lost their death-grip on the scales. All right, officially _worse_ than riding a horse.

Twenty seconds lasted forever. When he let go on the other side, the Snake snapped again at an infected AI that was getting a little too close. Its tail slipped in the river, came out black, but like rain off hot metal, it evaporated back to purple. Stronger than Phoenix's virus.

One of the shadowy huge buildings ahead moved in the gloom, an entire block shifting. Fuck, not a building, the octopus-boss, complete in all its sticky glory. Milky white eyes glared down at them, and its tentacles writhed and snapped the air. A hollow scream vibrated in his chest like a thunderclap. Snake studied this new threat with a glazed red stare. It weaved gracefully around the rubble in their path while he hung back on the street – a sweep of those huge tentacles and he'd be gone – and awaited the clash of the titans.

When Snake struck, fangs first, excitement bobbed in his throat, clenched when a tentacle came up, faster than he could register, and grabbed Snake from the air. A bloated bellow of triumph – and then fury as Snake wriggled free and curled around the tentacle, constricted. What would this look like in real life – a virus and an infected program struggling to infect the other?

The octopus fell backwards, took several buildings down with it, tentacles grappling the Snake. He sprinted forward for a closer look –

And stopped.

Four – no, five – infected AI crept closer. One had the naked frame of things that might have been wings on its back, and a couple crawled on the ground, faces upturned and eager, all of them rotting, all eyes pale and dead.

From the deafening impacts reverberating through the maze of streets and buildings, Snake wasn't having such an easy time in its battle. No help there, not now.

SWAT training only went so far when you had no weapons and couldn't touch your enemy, but at least it'd been drilled in to watch for any circling behaviour, anything that could get him trapped. Easy pickings if they did – they'd just have to reach in and brush him with one of those dripping hands – and he sure as hell wasn't about to go down cornered like an animal.

A gap was all he needed, came when one of the crawling things, hungrier than the rest to infect him, lurched against the other to knock it out of the way. He dashed forward out of the circle missed one grabbing hand by inches, and took off down one of the side streets. Not one he'd hurtled down with Pritchard, but he could double back once he got his bearings. Hell, the sounds of two viruses fighting weren't exactly quiet.

One side street led to an alley, then another side street. The rise of buildings hid the platform, the edge of the city. Shit, was he lost?

The sounds of fighting stopped with an abrupt final crash of building. No way to tell who the victor was. Dammit, he didn't even know where he was going.

He passed a memory cluster tucked tight into a doorway. Like the one in the park, it faded, blinked purple-grey-purple. From inside, a rhythmic beeping, and for a moment he thought that it _was_ a heart, caught inside. No – wait. He knew that sound. Not a heart, but a heart monitor. All too familiar. What the hell was in that memory cluster?

Purple peeked out from behind a building ahead. Snake's thick body glided past, stopped at his shout. No black tainted the purple scales, and when it spotted him its eyes switched back to a happy green – then amber.

The hand shot out from his left, his dodge slamming him back into the doorway. Snake darted towards him, a purple blur, but the arm snatched out again, and he caught a glimpse of white eyes and teeth so sharp the points glittered in the half-light. Too close.

He stepped backwards, and the light from the memory cluster gave a brave flare, tangled across his gold shards and drew him into the purple light.

That damn thing better not be able to follow him.

The first thing that appeared in front of him after the light dimmed and colour came back – a white wall. A chunk glitched, like an old computer game, and he startled backwards. The heart monitor beeped steadily behind him, but he... _knew_ that wall, the patterns he'd traced in the faint texture like constellations in the night's sky. Here a lion's face, mane a subtle cluster of dots, there an old man with a too-long nose and a splash of what could be coffee for an eye.

Yeah, he'd stared at that wall for a long time, once. He knew what lay behind him.

When he turned, it was slowly, like a man about to face the scene of a bloody car crash. Not even trying to mentally prepare himself helped, didn't touch the clench of grief.

He glanced, then let his gaze go to the opposite wall. Dread and grief formed a cold ball in his stomach. If he'd been in his real body, maybe he would have had to fight nausea too. His hands clenched, gold shards prickling up.

Once more, he needed to see. This time his eyes didn't skitter away. Fingers went to the side of the hospital bed and tightened in the blanket thrown over the man he used to be.

A strip of gauze wound over his eyes. Must have just been when he'd had them replaced with augmented optics. Augmented arms and legs lay like lumps of dead wood. Where they attached to flesh, the skin puffed; red and ringed with yellowing bruises. Dented into his forehead, the CASIE aug brand smeared a livid purple spot next to a series of stitches. Not that purple when he'd first seen it – this had to be... three, four days until he woke up?

He stalked around the bed, couldn't take his eyes off himself. Disgust rose in his throat. He hadn't needed all this, hadn't _wanted_ all this. But Sarif saw fit to make him a big expensive toy. Pushed the boundaries of science, of augmentation, without an ounce of guilt. Just another guy who thought himself a god.

Cards sat on the bedside table, grey-tinged pastel colours sombre. Messages varied between _Get Well Soon_ and _Deepest Sympathies._ Flowers spread in vases, on the table, at the window, a respectful enough distance so no petals fell on the sleeping patient. The room hummed and beeped with machines, some he recognised, some he couldn't even begin to guess. The heart monitor kept its slow and steady blip.

A sigh at the door, quiet under all the machines.

Pritchard stared down at his sleeping form on the bed, lips dipped at the edges and brow furrowed. Detached pity there in every line, contemplation of an injured animal. Weak and helpless. Free to play around with, unconscious through the worst of it. Unable to say no.

With a whisper, the door slid open, effortless and smooth. Of course, LIMB clinic – they'd transferred him back and forth between there and the labs, or so they told him. A state of the art facility, kind to its generous donors – one of who walked through the doorway to clap Pritchard on the shoulder without a trace of guilt or shame.

“Well, Frank?” Sarif gestured at him with augmented hand, a collector showing off the latest in the menagerie of exotic beasts. “What do you think? Isn't he something? I thought the rebreather might not take – his lungs were pretty stubborn – but the docs got there in the end. Had to make a few adjustments for the Typhoon too – now _that_ was hard, I'm telling you. Couple of points we nearly lost him. Knew he'd pull through, though. Adam's always been a fighter.”

Colour deserted Pritchard's face into a dead tint, left lips and the brown rings under bloodshot eyes a too-dark shade. Sleep must be coming hard, if at all. “Yes, Sarif. You've definitely outdone yourself. I doubt he'll be happy when he wakes up, though.”

“I've given him the tools he needs. He wants to help us track down Megan's killers, then he'll play ball.” A wave of the hand this time. Dismissal. Pritchard's brow creased deeper, but behind, Sarif wouldn't see that. “You've got your tools, right? I want that infolink ready to go when he wakes up. I want to get him used to it. The surgeons are saying three days until it's safe, but he's already been stirring. Dreaming, I think.” Sarif came to stand next to Pritchard, frowning down at his sleeping form. “Have to keep increasing the sedation, the health implant gets used to the dose. Anyway, you've got this, right? I need to sign off on the paperwork. Pain in the ass, but it's gotta be done.”

“You're leaving me alone with him?” Was that a note of panic or disgust in Pritchard's voice? “I was under the impression –”

“He's knocked out, Frank. _Asleep_. Something maybe you should consider doing, you look like hell.” A half laugh, derision. “What do you want me to do? You want me to grab a nurse and ask them to hold your hand while you install the infolink –”

“That's not necessary.” Any more jaw-clenching and Pritchard's teeth would shatter. “I just thought there would be more staff on hand.”

Sarif shrugged. “Press a button, someone'll come running. Not sure what you're expecting, though. Get your job done, it'll take ten minutes, then go get some sleep. Builders are gonna be in and out of the offices all day, you're not gonna get any work done. I'll talk to you later.” Sarif's hand on Pritchard's shoulder jerked his stomach. He stepped forward, but Sarif turned, walked back out of the door and closed it with a click.

Even with the machines, the silence burned. Pritchard's eyes went everywhere, to the door, the walls, even the ceiling, but skimmed over his sleeping augmented body as though it hurt to look at him properly. After a moment of anxious pacing, Pritchard sat in the chair next to his bed. A laptop appeared out of the rucksack on the floor beside the chair, and _Get Well Soon_ hit a _Deepest Sympathies_ when a sweep of hand pushed them to one side, slid off the desk and onto the floor. Pritchard stooped, caught it between two fingers and held it up. The front bore an image of a teddy bear, paw wrapped in a bandage and a little speech bubble with _Ouch!_ written inside.

Pritchard's lips pressed together, and he would have called it anger if those grey eyes hadn't squeezed shut tight for a moment. Head dipped, Pritchard lay the card back on the table with a reverence he'd never seen Pritchard give... anything. “I... didn't get you a card. I think we'd both agree that empty sentiments are a waste of time.”

His past self lay on the bed, chest barely rising and falling. Hooked up to all those machines he could have had some terrible disease. Preferable to his limbs being removed. Pritchard started up the laptop, dug a micro-USB from one of the various pockets. “No flowers, either. You would wake up just in time to see them die, and I'll spare you that at least.” Pritchard stood, leaned over him, and pressed a tiny plastic circle, patterned with miniature circuits to the side of his head. “I think you'll have enough on your plate when you wake up, Jense –”

The convulsive slam of augmented hand on the bed sent Pritchard reeling back into the chair. They both paused, watched the hand as it tightened, fingers inching closed, bit by bit.

He didn't remember that. He didn't remember any of this.

Pritchard edged the chair a little further away. “Jensen?”

The heart monitor bleeped faster. A tremor shuddered through augmented fingers. On the bed, his head jerked, agitated the heart monitor some more. He made a small, helpless noise, like a baby disturbed by a loud noise waking up.

Pritchard froze in place, legs drawn up into the chair. Horror widened those grey eyes. Then, like a spell broken, shot out of the chair, leaned across for the call button at the side of the bed.

His whisper had been the barest brush of breath in the air, but they both heard it. _“Can't... see...”_

The call button stayed unpressed. Pritchard's mouth opened, but nothing came out. Caught between disgust and pity.

On the bed, his past self stirred, head moving little by little. Some yellow fluid soaked the gauze, ran down his cheek like a tear. “Is someone there?” The dry rasp of his throat coated his words in gravel. “I can't see... My legs... can't feel my... legs...” A pause, and then: “Megan?”

Pritchard half-edge forward, on the cusp of some decision. A second passed, and a tremble shook fingers as they reached over and slipped into his own. Did he remember that? Did some vague memory hide itself in the back of his head of a warm hand in his own, squeezing gently and comforting him in a moment of half-waking?

On the bed he whispered _“Megan,”_ one more time, and Pritchard pressed the call button, kept hold of his hand until the door opened and one of the doctors walked in, an entourage of interns and nurses trotting at her heels. Pritchard stood, backed off when they descended on the bed, face washed back to the usual faint disapproval.

Maybe there had been more, but the memory flared with a grey tinge, drained the colour out of everything. The doctors still moved around his bed, adjusting something in an IV and watching the heart monitor, but Pritchard stood behind the chair, hands on the back of it, staring at him, until the walls turned to ash and he was sucked out in the last flame of violet light that the cluster could give.

Back on his feet in the city. Snake swayed back and forth in front of him. No sign of the corrupted AI, they must have met their end between the Snake's jaws.

One step and his head spun, a dizzy whirling fairground ride of black and gold and purple. The memory cluster faded to an unremarkable grey on the ground.

Shattering the bathroom mirror in his apartment took the edge off. If that got back to Sarif they'd never had the conversation. The inside didn't match the outside. Black metal and indents where skin should be. The agony of learning to reuse his hands, his legs. Not his fault his fist agreed.

A year ago he'd been whole. Normal. What he wouldn't give to go back.

Had to push it away, to the back of his mind. Back to mission-mode, a push of the dusty SWAT switch in his head – nothing should exist except for getting the job done. Later, when they were out of the machine and after an awkward talk with Sarif, he'd make sure Pritchard got back home fine, then go back to own apartment, drown himself in a bottle of whiskey or whatever the hell he had left in the cupboard. Lose himself in a crap movie. Forget, for a little while.

His gold reflected, shone off the purple scales of the Snake. Pritchard, still waiting for him – or the Snake at least. “Let's go.”

It slithered forward, and, by the time he got his bearings and spotted the platform to the next room, it had added to its tally of AI it crushed into shards.

The glass wall, or what remained of it, shattered at Snake's insistent push through. Where Pritchard saved him from infection was now just a hole, burned in like a cinder dropped on ice. He stepped over the chunks of glass that Snake left behind and crossed the barrier out of the city. Gaps in the stairs, black holes that bit away here and there. He gathered himself, then scrambled up the first few, leaped onto a step hanging in mid air. A few more mountain goatish leaps, and he scrambled up to the platform that overlooked the other side of the city. Snake followed, half of its thick body draped over the side.

The loading room now only contained the letters O and G on the wall, the rest a dark sludge of virus underneath. Snake flicked its tongue out at it when they passed, but left it alone. The server was dying, maybe the Snake could sense that. Anything that wasn't an immediate threat could be disregarded.

At the end of the hallway, the security room glimmered with a kind of gauzy half-light. No door or even a wall there, just a straight shot and then darkness at the end. He patted the Snake's scaly side. “You go first.”

Whether it understood or not, the Snake continued on as he slowed, soon swallowed up by the darkness inside the security room. He counted the seconds off. When thirty passed with no sounds of anything in the room, not a hiss or a scream, he edged carefully forward to the melted entrance. Vague shapes inside, nothing he could make out. “Pritchard?”

No reply, not even a snippy ' _You took your time'_. “Snake?”

Something rumbled in the distance, a long way away. Something else replied with a hiss.

He took a step inside. The exit still shone bright and purple as ever, cast a glow over the floor nearby. The security nodes hung empty and broken dead planets. The one Pritchard had tried to recover had cracked like an egg, thin orange lines pulsing as though something inside wanted to break out. The dark, looming shape of the security console beckoned. Dread dropped his stomach. A shape there, and as he got closer he picked out the dark stain of corruption that spread up one cheek, eyes that had closed. “Pritchard? Hey, Pritchard, come on, I brought it, let's get out –”

Like a drop of oozing blood, a red avatar slithered from behind the console. “He's not going anywhere. But thanks for rejoining the party, guard dog.”

Could you punch other avatars in cyberspace? His knuckles itched to try it, but that probably wouldn't do him any good. “Got tired of yelling through speakers, did you? Not going to do you any good coming here though.”

Phee stood beside Pritchard, shards flexing. That must be what he looked like, only gold. “You don't think so, huh, guard dog?”

A red hand on Pritchard's shoulder brought purple scales to the surface. Unlike with his, they lay flat, didn't want to mix with Phoenix. He took several steps forward before he realised it. “Don't you fucking touch him!”

“He was mine before he was yours. I'll do what I want with him.” Phoenix patted Pritchard on the head, then yanked the avatar's ponytail back. “He should be thanking me for this. Taking down Sarif Industries from the inside? That was all we used to talk about. He had some smart ideas, our Snake did.” The hand gave another yank, jerked the chair around. “Why don't you tell him yourself, Snakey? Tell him how you used to say you'd put a bullet in Sarif if you could. Go on.”

Black had crept up Pritchard's chest to collarbone, crawled up a cheek. The stump of arm dripped. Eyes opened, but they wouldn't meet his. A rasped whisper hung in the air. “You were... supposed to leave.... Jensen, you never... listen to me...”

“I'm not going without you. Not this time.” He wanted to give some small comfort, say something that would dampen the panic in Pritchard's eyes, but no words would come.

“That's good for me. I thought you were out of the game.” Default avatars couldn't smile, but he could fucking hear one in Phee's voice. “Our boy Snakey here is going to take a little longer to give up his secrets.” Phee leaned in close to Pritchard, ruby faceplate gleaming off purple. “And he's going to feel them all drain, along with who he is. Then his biochip goes pop.” The faceplate pointed back in his direction. “This is the price of betrayal. Anyone else would do the same. You would do the same.”

“He didn't betray you! He just didn't want to spend ten years in prison.” Another careful step forward. “Anyone else would do the same for _that_. What was he supposed to say?”

“He was supposed to say _no!”_ Phoenix's voice rolled out across the void, echoed off unseen walls. “He should have spat in Sarif's face at the offer!”

“Maybe he didn't hate Sarif. Maybe he just wanted to impress you while you were playing leader. Maybe he didn't deserve to have his life ruined because of your bad choices. Did you even think about that?” CASIE might have been out, but it didn't take a genius to know what kind of person Phoenix was. Appealing to a better half might not work, but since he had no weapons it was worth a shot. “This won't work out well for you. Let him go, call off your virus. Get out.”

Phoenix's laugh grated. “After I finally have a chance to take Sarif down? No way, guard dog. Not a chance. If you were me, you'd understand.”

“I don't think so.” Another hiss from in the murky void that surrounded them. Nothing to see but the rolling black. A loop passed over the defence nodes. The Snake?

“Oh, you would. You will. But I'm afraid you're not going to be in control when you punish Sarif. You'll see it, though. I'll make sure you're aware of everything.”

A shadow caught his eye, and when he turned his head Snake thumped onto the platform, eyes red, its mad writhing almost sweeping him off over the edge. Not until it turned did he see the virus clinging to its back. Snake snapped, but the virus scuttled up and down like an overgrown spider. A couple of scales rotted to black. It whirled, around and around, whipped over them, a rainbow of hissing and spitting, into the darkness beyond, curved back towards them and reared, slammed down on the platform. A rocking tremor, the platform caught in the throes of an earthquake.

The virus, torn off by the force, landed shrieking with a wet slap. The Snake regained its position, hissed back with bared fangs leaking light. They regarded each other, two calculating predators. Not a scratch on the virus, but the black scales on the Snake were concerning. No question which one was faster. Could Snake grab hold in time?

“That's your virus I assume, Snake?” Phoenix crouched beside the chair, considering the batting viruses like a man watching football. “A primary infecter? Good luck getting those fangs in. That's why I prefer mine... there's just something about total infection that's great for the insides of NSN machines, don't you think?”

Pritchard's eyes stayed on him, and it was as though Phoenix wasn't even there. “Jensen, get out of here. _Go_.”

“Yes,” Phoenix said before he could open his mouth, “ _go_. But first of all, Snake, tell him what kinda coffin you want. What's your favourite flowers – you can arrange that, right, guard dog? I'm voting roses, you always seemed like a rose kind of guy, Snake.”

“Pritchard, don't listen to him.” The black crawled to Pritchard's nose. No time now, no time at all. “It's gonna be okay.”

He couldn't save Megan, but he could sure as hell try and save Pritchard.

Phoenix hissed something into Pritchard's ear, but his gaze went elsewhere, to Snake and the virus, yellow fangs flashing to try and hit a shadowed dash.

Or not Snake _and_ the virus. Both viruses. Both could infect.

Time to make a decision.

He dodged a thick coil that passed by like a purple subway train, circled them to try and find a spot. Pritchard called his name, but there was no time to look over, no time to acknowledge, because the virus spotted him with a scream of glee, tentacles thrashing and maw ripping open. It wove around the snake, eager as a dog pursuing a rabbit, and barrelled into him, enveloping him in a tide of cold ooze. It infected, gold crumbling to black, numbness spreading –

The fangs pierced him, two painless spears sliding through his body. Through the cold of the virus's infection, heat bloomed, liquid fire burning every facet. His yell caught in his throat, but light streamed from under the gold, and the black that hugged his shards evaporated into the air. Cracks in the avatar pulsed with purple, the shimmer around him casting a wide glow on the platform.

Infected, by the right virus this time.

Snake retracted its fangs from him, deposited him back on the platform, then curved its head to try and snatch the virus up again. A furious screech, and the virus dodged again, resumed the fight and left him free to face the other problem.

“You bastard.” Phoenix's voice was a low grate of disbelief. “You dirty fucking _bastard_.”

His steps didn't make any sound, but each one spread the light like vines across the platform. When he raised his hands, gold dripped, disappeared before it hit the floor. “Hey, Phoenix.” Even his voice had changed, echoed with several layers of pitch. Sounded like he had a whole damn quartet down his throat. “Want to see if you can rise from the ashes?”

A snarl, and Phoenix took a step back – or would have if Pritchard's free arm hadn't grabbed out, seized a red wrist and held on.

One hand found the ruby gleam of throat. He squeezed, a satisfying amount of pressure under the avatar's palm. His other hand he pulled back.

Phoenix's voice choked with fury. “You still came too late, guard dog.”

He drove his hand under what would have been ribs, up to his elbow, poured the infection into the avatar.

Red split with purple. He dug deeper, sent the virus flooding the avatar until red peeled away, floated down like flower petals to the floor. Purple leaked out of the hollow inside, faded until a cluster of bright gold hovered there where the avatar had stood.

Pritchard blinked in his direction, a confirmation.

He stepped into the light, let it envelop his gold and purple. A flicker of words in front of him, and then a smug non-tone of “ _download complete_.”

Download of what? Better not be yet another virus, he'd had enough of that shit today.

Behind him, the Snake battered itself against the platform once more, but he had something more important to do.

One of Pritchard's eyes had bled to milk white, and the black stole everything but mouth, cheek, and the other eye, which gazed up, alert as he approached.

A hand went around Pritchard's back, slipped into the decay there, hauled until he'd tugged Pritchard from the chair to sag against his body. His other hand crept between them, against Pritchard's chest. The last time he'd been this close to someone it had been Megan in his arms, mewling breathless in his ear. Pritchard made no sound, but the weight soothed, and where he touched, purple bloomed and black retreated, slowly uncovered the avatar's skin. A grey eye, wide and steely, stared up as he gazed down. Pritchard's arm glinted with regained purple shards, and it came up to catch around the back of his neck.

He lowered his head, lay the cheek section of his faceplate against Pritchard's cheek. Purple scales met his gold like old friends, tangled into each other, layered like lovers. As good as any kiss.

Mist swirled around them, indigo and violet that brightened in a pulse to yellow and gold. Infection fought back, a final feeble twitch of something caught in a trap, but he crushed Pritchard harder to his body, burned out the decay.

“You never listen to me,” Pritchard whispered into whatever served as his ear, voice as breathless as Megan's had been, “but this time I'm glad you didn't, Jensen.”

“Not in my nature to abandon people.” He untangled himself slowly, reluctant to let go, but eager to leave this place. “Ready to get out of here? Think I owe you a martini, if you drink them.”

According to the way Pritchard's eyes flitted down while the corner of lips lifted into a small smile, the implication wasn't missed. Purple flickered in a tease. “After this I feel like something stronger, Jensen, a lot stronger. But we can talk about that when we leave.” A jerk of Pritchard's head towards the two battling viruses. “Looks like your job isn't quite finished yet. I think the Snake needs some help, we can't let Phee's virus rampage around in here.”

“Right. Stay here, I don't want you getting infected again. Or you can get back through the exit, wait for me to follow you up.”

Pritchard's firm shake of head switched the ponytail from side to side. “You weren't going to leave without me, remember? I think it's only fair that I don't leave without you.”

His hand squeezed Pritchard's shoulder, and the gesture conveyed the words he couldn't find.

The virus clung to Snake's back as it whirled around, the most fucked-up rodeo he'd ever seen. A few more scales had blackened, and he really didn't want to think about the scenario where a giant snake _wasn't_ on their side.

“Hey!” He dodged in front of the Snake, waved his hands as though trying to flag down a cab. “Want to stop moving so I can get that thing off you?”

It took no notice, head snapping along its back, trying to follow the unpredictable scuttle of the virus. He waited until it passed by, and then flung himself up, as he had on the bridge. Harder this time, considering the speed. The scales reacted to his infection with a glow so golden it seemed green under his palms. Nothing to hang onto, and when he slipped he was only saved from falling back onto the platform by a jolt from the snake that launched him a few inches upwards, enough leverage to haul himself up.

Further down the Snake's body, the virus clawed its way towards him, ducking the snap of Snake's jaws. Damn thing really wanted him infected again.

He stood, half-crouched, waited.

The Snake reared up, whirled in another frantic circle, and he launched himself downward, sliding down the Snake's back at speed and smacking himself into the virus, grabbed hold of its writhing tendrils and hauling it off, onto the ground. Disgusting. It landed on top of him, a heavy smothering blanket, snapping black ooze onto his face.

His hands jabbed into the black, loaded it with gold, and the virus's scream became a howl.

A hiss above him, and the weight lifted off. One fang curved through the virus's body, the other through its misshapen lump of head. It screamed again, kept screaming until the last of the black bled into nothing and gold floated away between the Snake's jaws.

Across his body, the virus's last attempts at infection melted away. He got up, supported himself with the thick wall of Snake's body, and staggered back over to where Pritchard stood. “See? Not a problem.” Most of the black drained from Pritchard, but a small spot still bloomed on the edge of jaw. He brushed it with the back of his hand, watched as it crumbled and fell.

“Cocky, Jensen?” Pritchard shrugged one shoulder, a small smile still curving those thin lips. “Well, I suppose you have every right to be. For now. Hopefully that's the last of the virus in my aug. Let's go, before something else decides it wants to drain us and eat our information.”

“Sounds good to me.” But something nagged in the back of his mind, and he turned around to where the Snake considered the spot where the virus had dissolved. “What about your pet over there? What's going to happen to it?”

“Jensen, it's not... a real snake, it's a graphical representation of –”

“I know that. I know.” He watched as it slid over the side of the balcony and into the void, its tail giving one last flick as it swept out of sight. “But it helped me.”

Pritchard's sigh was patient, and one he thought could grow on him. “It'll take care of the security nodes. At least... I hope it will.” Pritchard followed his gaze to the inky murk. “And I guess I'll keep it in here. Provided Sarif doesn't wipe the machine and forbid me to connect to it ever again... I think there's a chance I can rebuild. You can even come and visit. Throw it overgrown AI mice to eat.”

The exit loomed before them, beckoned with its brightness. “Yeah, if I want to run through a giant city and dodge disgusting viruses again, I'll give your door a tap.”

Pritchard's chuckle was an amused nasally huff, but it sent a giddy reel through his stomach anyway. “You know, you sound a lot like a choir, Jensen. It'll almost be a pity to have you back to normal.”

In the light of the exit, they faced each other. Pritchard stood close – kissing distance, if he'd been back in his real body. Eyes went from roaming his gold chest back to his face, steel grey and beautiful in his purple and gold glow.

A smile twitched the corner of Pritchard's mouth, so sincere that if he'd had lips he would have reciprocated. Those grey eyes didn't waver, and fingers brushed against his hand down by his side. “Maybe –”

But the light tugged them, ripped away the rest of Pritchard's words, and dragged them both into the blinding shine of the exit.

 

A breath left him in a sigh when he came back. No fingers against his own, their avatars blown apart or... downloaded, whatever happened to avatars. He clenched them tight, and then relaxed them back into the chair. Mutterings around him, half-formed words that his mind couldn't comprehend yet. His HUD flared to life, scanned vitals and gave him a green ping of health. Fine, he was fine. Out of that damn thing without a scratch. And his augs all his own, no desire to sink a blade or two into Sarif's chest.

He groaned when he leaned forward, spine shifting to make up for sitting down for God knew how long. The screen peeled away in front of his eyes, but he ignored Sarif and Kerry when they emerged from the brief blur of fuzz in his vision, and the guards shuffling in the background. A lecture was coming, by the snarl on Sarif's lips, but instead of waiting for it he stood up and stretched. “We did it. Made it out.”

The words weren't for them, but the less he had to deal with Sarif and Kerry the better. He'd take Pritchard's hand – awake this time, awake and real – and haul them both out of there, any protests be damned. Sarif could yell at him from inside his infolink while they threw down some whiskey and watched the crappiest of crappy movies together. And talked. There'd be a lot to talk about.

Not even Sarif's anxious glare could stop the small smile across his lips. “Francis, about that drink I owe you –”

A prickle in his head. An uneasy stab of sensation. Something wrong.

Pritchard still slumped against the NSN. Not awake, not out with him. Between lanky locks of hair, skin gleamed pale, too pale. He brushed away the wayward strands of hair back to Pritchard's ear. “Francis?”

Blood ran in a thin stream from Pritchard's nose, from the corners of eyes. It coated his fingers, warm, and dripped down to stain red against a white turtleneck.


End file.
